Vladimír Dlouhý

* 1922

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How I became the personal driver of Hana Benešová

Vladimír Dlouhý was born on May 27, 1922 in the Czech village Kvasilov in Volhynia on the territory of the then Poland (today Ukraine). He experienced both Soviet and Nazi occupation in his native village. In January 1942 he got married and moved to his wife’s family in the nearby town Zdolbuniv. In the summer of the same year, he was called as a locksmith to the Todt Organization and sent to Kyiv. He escaped from this job and returned home. His father managed to bribe the clerk and obtain a stamp of dismissal. Vladimír then worked in an engineering company in Zdolbuniv. Through a hole in the fence of the factory, he saw with his own eyes the Nazi murdering the local Jews. After the liberation by the Soviet army, he joined the Czechoslovak troops in the USSR. He was recruited on March 15, 1944 in Jeframov and assigned to the auto military unit in the 2nd Czechoslovak Parachuting Brigade. As a driver of Studebaker, he then participated in the Carpathian-Dukla operation. He suffered a gunshot through his hand near Nižný Komárnik. After the fighting near Liptovský Mikuláš, he was transferred to Košice to the castle guard of President Edvard Beneš, who flew from Moscow on April 3, 1945. He was appointed the personal driver of Hana Benešová, the wife of president in Bratislava. He thus experienced the triumphant eight-hour journey of the presidential couple from Bratislava to Brno on May 12, 1945, lined with the crowds of enthusiastic residents. After leaving the army, Vladimír Dlouhý lived with his family in Žatec.