Bohuslav Eliáš

* 1937

  • "When we were talking about the military, I - in order to escape the military, as I said before, at least for a while - applied to the conservatory. And the soldiers recommended it to me - that's what I thought, but they let me anyway. They didn't recommend it to me, but they sent me there because I was already a bit visible in this field, when they sent me to - as I said - opening bars to sing and stuff like that. So, they sent me there. I passed the exams, but then my singing teacher, who I went to externally for two years before the war, came to me and said: 'Well, you passed, but you didn't get a political recommendation from the military service.' Because I went to Svatá Hora to minister, they all knew it, the Bolsheviks. The captain, the company commander, even called me and said: 'Couldn't you go somewhere else, to the pub for example?' 'I couldn't, I'm sorry.' Well, so they sent me there. And such a curiosity - the chairman of the admission committee, which ultimately did not accept me for this reason, was Oldřich Nový, then an aging star of show business. Well, when they told me this judgement and I was standing there a little sad, he turned to me in front of everyone and said: 'Would you like to go to the operetta department?' I wanted to sing, that is, opera singing, and the viola as a second instrument. Well, I told this star in front of everyone: 'No, don't be angry, operetta is not my field.' And I left."

  • "So, they [armored men] made a clearing there. This First Lieutenant Stříž died in 14 days, so there were two victims - my father, he died almost on the spot, and this one. And it was that great-granddaughter or granddaughter who had this photograph, and Dr. Středa, after some mutual communication, got it from her. It's a completely new thing for me, and also the sight of a cheerful dad - I didn't know him like that. He was more calm and quiet in nature, emotions didn't play much of a role for him. That's how I remember him. I never saw him smile, or I don't remember him. And here I see him in such a wonderful situation, when he really rejoices with his whole life that everything is finally different. Well, in five minutes, in three minutes, everything was different. So that's a kind of memento to appreciate every moment."

  • "I still remember when we were in Pardubice, after my father's death, that some acquaintances of my mother came to her from the street or from somewhere and urged her to go to the railway station and go there to beat up some German, for her father's death. So, in Pardubice, when the Germans were expelled, our Czechs behaved like this."

  • "Full of jubilation and full of joy, without weapons, they go to take over some office or institution from the Germans, because the Germans - if it was a military administration, they never surrendered to Czech civilians, they always wanted to have soldiers as their counterpart. That's why dad was invited, with his unit, I don't know how they got together, to go and perform this, to accept the capitulation from I don't know who - I don't know these details anymore. Well, they didn't get there. Because two German armored personnel carriers stood behind the church in Pardubice. Well, when they saw this glory, they knew nothing better than to start shooting at them. Dad had a lot of gunshot wounds in his shoulder and beyond, and they ran into them. They grabbed my dad somehow by the belt, because it was the armored one, it had two wheels in the front and belts in the back, so they dragged him about 25 meters. His head was so injured that he was unable to live any longer. But, as mom always said, he bled out within an hour or so. She was still with him when he was still - in quotation marks - alive.'

  • “When he [my brother] emigrated and he could do the things he wanted to, we have a lot of testimonies from people who, say, have relatives there and went to visit, so we heard many times that he’d give his last penny to someone who didn’t have anything at all. [The person] had emigrated and was starting from scratch. So he’d let them stay in his place for a fortnight, until he found someone who could help them work out what steps to take next. He completely changed his approach to people, which was a big surprise to us because we saw him as a man who was strict both to himself and to others.”

  • “Towards the end of the war we thought we’d been liberated by the Soviet army, but that wasn’t true at all. Pardubice was basically liberated by the Vlasovites... I remember them when they passed through Pardubice to Chrudim, by the graveyard, there was a whole column of them, and because they’d been in Russia, they had Russian clothes, so we thought that they’re the Russians. We cheered that the Russians were here, but then we found out that they were captives from the Russian army who’d agreed to stay in the German army. And because the Germans didn’t have any uniforms for them, they kept their Russian ones, and we thought that they were really the Russians.”

  • “Dad was a reserve officer, in the end that cost him his life in Pardubice... he’d take us on street inspections, which he was responsible for in the time of the air strikes... when the Anglo-American bombers flew over Pardubice and onwards; Pardubice had to be blacked out, so they wouldn’t happen to drop bombs on Pardubice, which they managed to do anyone in early 1944... we were in Chvojenec, where Granddad had a pub, and we were coming home from the field on a heap of hay, and we saw the Americans fly up at high noon, the aeroplanes shone, and then suddenly bombs started falling on Semtín.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Liberec, 05.05.2015

    (audio)
    duration: 01:28:18
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Liberec, 12.01.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 02:34:34
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 3

    Liberec, 15.02.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:13:54
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

To appreciate every moment...

A photo of that time
A photo of that time
photo: archive of the witness

Bohuslav Eliáš was born on March 14, 1937 in Pardubice as the fourth of five sons of Vladimír and Anna Eliášovi. His father, an officer of the Czechoslovak Republic army in reserve, died on May 8, 1945 in a collision with a German armored car. Shortly afterwards, his mother and the children moved to Liberec, where his uncle Jaroslav provided them with supportive environment. All five brothers soon became passionate about music. After finishing secondary grammar school, Bohuslav Eliáš thought about entering the conservatory, but in the end, he kept music just for fun and graduated from the Faculty of Civil Engineering. He enjoyed the joys of music abundantly after returning from military service, when he became a choirmaster of the church choir for many decades, later an external member of the Liberec theater and his own dulcimer band. In 1962, he got married and had three children. During the period of political relaxation, he founded a Catholic Scouts club, which, after scouting was banned again, he managed to integrate under TJ Ještěd. In the 1970s and 1980s, he supported the activities of illegal Franciscan communities and participated in spiritual activities not authorized by the state. From 1978, he worked at the secondary school of construction in Liberec. There, in November 1989, he became the initiator of protest actions that helped stir up the Velvet revolutionary events in Liberec. In 2023, Bohuslav Eliáš lived in Liberec.