Vladimír Dvořáček

* 1936

  • „Já sám, když jsem byl dítě, tak co bylo německé, to se ničilo. To byla taková nevraživost proti všemu německému. Já jsem měl německý slabikář, to byl krásnej slabikář, mně by se býval později hodil. Všechno, co bylo napsáno německy, tak jsme černili tuší, tak jako za první republiky. Za protektorátu se černilo zase všecko, co bylo československé, tak se černilo taky tuší.“

  • „Then there were the interviews and we had to say whether we agree or not [with the 1968 occupation]. I’ll say it as my colleague expressed it. We were chickenshits, brown noses, boot lickers. I was a bit of a coward, I was neither a brown nose nor a boot licker. But when thez asked me whether it was right that the Russians and others came here, I had this inner feeling and I said that if they had not come here, that socialism wouldn’t last here, so they saved socialism.”

  • „After the main raid, that old man came when he was able to. They had those two shot dead, they arrested Krejčíř but they did not have the third one, he was still missing from the count. The Gestapo officer lit the fire in the stove to cook some hot soup or some snack and as she lit the fire, Karel started choking in the chimney. And they had a German shepherd, a dog, that SS commando, with them, and the dog, as soon as Karel climbed down from the chimney to that space, it caused some noise and the dog started jumping at the door, someone opened them and Karel, already suffocating in that smoke, fell out.”

  • Then, we were in Hradiště. There was a safe house, actually. ‚I’ll be waiting for you at a certain spot in front of the gate.’ So I came there, a lowly private, and then he went on straight to the apartment, he had a key, he opened the door, we went to one room and now, ‘Weite down for example what Strachwitz did yesterday.’ What could I write down, he mopped the hallway and took part in exercises and that was all I could write about the army service.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    V Boskovicích, 19.08.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 02:36:56
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    V Boskovicích, 09.07.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:38:53
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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Don’t do unto others...

Vladimír Dvořáček, high school graduation photograph. 1955
Vladimír Dvořáček, high school graduation photograph. 1955
photo: archiv pamětníka

Vladimír Dvořáček was born on the 29th of November in 1936 in Velenov near Boskovice. When he was a child, he suffered a grave illness and he was left with permanent heart damage and worsened vision. During the WWII, resistance operated around the village and after their hideout was revealed, Vladimir’s aunt and uncle, Josef and Marie Krejčíř, were executed by the Nazis in April 1945. After graduating from high school, Vladimír went to study Russian and Arts at the Faculty of Education. When he served in the army in Uherské Hradiště, the military counter-intelligence contacted him several times and he had to contact captain Oldřich Babula, mostly about private Josef Strachwitz. Archive of Security Services lists him as an agent of the secret police but no files are preserved. In 1960, he married Marie Dyčková and their two sons were born, Vladimír a Libor. For all his life, he worked as a teacher and as a vice-headmaster at the basic school in Knínice and in Boskovice. He admits that after the events of 1968, he kept his mouth shut and stood the line even though he disagreed with the occupation. He was interested in the WWII resistance, he contacted some of the resistance fighters, he visited the Soviet Union but he disagreed with the official history of the resistance and its one-sided presentation. He played in a brass band, he designed and made decorations for various festivals, he became the chairman of the local branch of the Union for Czechoslovak – Soviet Friendship. He welcomed the events of 1989 with a great relief. In 1997, he retired. He now lives in Boskovice.