“We rode on bikes... there was a banked dirt cycling track in Kobylisy, we trained there. And one time when we were on the way there, we were overtaken by a transport... the Germans were taking our convicted fellow citizens to the shooting range in Kobylisy, and there they executed them... so we stopped going to Kobylisy after that. When I came to Rybitví in 1943, I experienced all sorts of things there. Air raids... I remember when Dresden was bombed, in February 1945 I think, that was such a dreadful bombing that even here in Pardubice we felt the earth tremble, and we saw the red glow on the horizon. Such a lot of people died there at the time, and Dresden itself suffered greatly. Later on, I often visited Germany on business, and I would travel via Dresden, so I always took the opportunity - fortunately, the Dresden gallery was left intact - so I always went to have a look at Raphael’s Madonna, and then I continued on my journey by train.”
“There was only one Goshawk [the Scout nickname of Jaroslav Foglar - trans.], he was a unique man. He had some peculiar educational methods. Say, if he needed to give someone – as they say – a ‘dressing down, he’d call them to him and make a speech. But you wouldn’t know if he was scolding you or praising you. And that felt much worse than if he’d told you off goodness knows how. He had these strange educational methods. One method was the so-called ‘black box’ at the camp. That was if you had dirty shoes or came late to the muster, then your name would get written on to a scrap of paper and thrown into the black box. We cooked for ourselves at the camp, we had various duties. And one of the duties was to peel the potatoes for lunch, so they’d come to Goshawk and say they needed two people to peel the potatoes. So Goshawk would pull two names out of the box, and the two luckless kids had to go peel potatoes instead of bathing or playing games. Well, so everyone tried to avoid getting stuck in the black box.”
“And that Hájek said he’d take a picture of someone sliding down the chute. And Hawk [Foglar] told us to slide in a well-mannered way, to make a good photo. And Hájek tried to catch us from up front, but the backdrop was bad, so he went round the other side, but then the sun was shining into his lens, so he kept coming closer and closer to the shore, and then the shore wasn’t good enough either, so he took his shoes off and stepped into the water, but he still wasn’t satisfied. He rolled his trousers up, he was up to his knees in water. That’s it! And at that point it was Vašek Černý’s turn, we Scouts called him Blackie. He was quite the rascal (well, that troop was full of rascals, but he was doubly so), and Hawk says to him: ‘Blackie, you have to be well-mannered.’ To which Blackie said: ‘Yeah, yeah sure.’ He climbed up, and off he went. But with no manners, he spread his arms and legs, and it made a picture that ended up on the cover of Mladý hlasatel. Well, he crashed into the water with such a splash that it splashed Mr Hájek all over his Leica, so then we had to dry it out.”
“I was in the troop for about three quarters of a year, I was a good Scout, I didn’t do any mischief, and Goshawk came to me and said: ‘Jindra, I need your name for a series.’ I considered it an honour that he chose my name out of all the others, but I said I’d have to ask Mum if she’d allow it. Mum said: ‘Ask him what kind of character it’ll be.’ So next meeting I asked, and Goshawk said: ‘Jindra, this character will never bring you any shame.’ So I agreed, and that’s how I got into the series. Except those were Rychlé šípy [the Rapid Arrows]. I was in a Scout troop, which was something completely different, we didn’t speak of the Rapid Arrows there.”
“And when we finished breaking camp, one time during roll call Hawk says: ‘Now, boys, we have tidy up here a bit.’ Because when you’re sawing planks for tent frames etc., you make all sorts of rubbish,there were nails lying about... and it was a meadow which the owner otherwise used to graze cattle. And Hawk said: ‘You know, when a cow eats up a nail, it gets inside its digestive tract, the cow stops eating and has to be slaughtered. That’s a waste of a cow. You have to collect up all of the nails.’ So gathered nails, and because everything we did had a bit of fun in it, we soon had the catchphrase: ‘Hawk, I saved a cow.’ And Hawk was doubly pleased. For one thing that his troop was obeying his instructions to collect nails, and secondly that a cow had been saved. In time we had gathered up the nails, and new nails were discovered less and less, and Hawk was pleased less often. And so one time, when we were shopping in Ledeč, it occurred to me to buy half a kilo of nails at the ironmonger’s, we let them rust up ahead of time, and then we occasionally put them on some spot where they would be found by some other attentive camp-goer. So he could call out: ‘Hawk, I saved a cow,’ and put the nail into the crate with the other ones. So by the end of the camp when we were returning to Prague, we had half a kilo of nails extra...”
“When Hawk died, his legacy started to be disputed. And those disputes were held in such an unfair way. They wrote about Hawk that he was blind, that he couldn’t see the will when he was signing it, that he couldn’t remember anything, and goodness knows what... So we who were putting the book together, we issued a statement in defence of Jaroslav Foglar. That was a wonderful gathering, which signed it. And we sent this statement to the newspapers and to various institutions around the country. About two months later, my wife was still alive, in Kosmonosy, and my wife called to me: ‘Jindra, come here, there’s someone on the phone for you from Uherské Hradiště.’ I was surprised because I had nothing to do with the city. It was Jožka Kubánik, the spokesman of the Moravian Slovakian Theatre in Uherské Hradiště, saying that he had gotten our statement and that the whole theatre, from the director to the usherettes and the cloakroom attendants, had signed it. And that this Kubánik had read the list of signers - it included the name, address, phone number, and signature. And he read my name, Jindra Hojer, so he called to ask me whether I was somehow connected to the one in Rapid Arrows. I said: ‘Not much, but a little bit, yes.’ (During one public event Hawk asked me to sign the books, I said: ‘But I’m not Jindra Hojer of the Rapid Arrows.’ And Hawk retorted: ‘Just you sign away.’ So in that way he showed me that the character had taken more than just my name.) And Mr Kubánik told me that they had a play there, based on the comics, Rapid Arrows, and that it would have its 100th repeat performance. That it would be nice if I could come. So we agreed with my wife and we drove to Uherské Hradiště. After the performance they dragged me on to the stage and showed me off as the real Hojer. Just imagine - I was there again for the 150th repeat, I spent the 200th repeat in my bed in Kosmonosy with lumbago. But I phoned with them during the interval, we had a telephone bridge with the audience! Then there was the 250th repeat, the 300th, the 350th, and this year, just recently, I was at the 400th repeat performance!”
“Grammar school - until halfway through my eighth [final] year I studied with honours - and then came the matriculation exam, and just when I was sitting for my German exam, in came the dreaded Inspector Werner, a German and a terror of all students, who had harsh requirements - there could be only one A mark from a subject in one class, and five to eight per cent of pupils had to fail the year, by order. Well, and he came in just when I was doing my German exam - and that was suddenly as if I had fell down out of a first-floor window, my head went completely blank, and Werner was already rubbing his hands in anticipation of my destruction. But he gave me a question which I finally remembered and managed, thanks to my wonderful German teacher, so he just waved his hand in disgust - and I passed. But I was completely groggy.”
Jindřich Hojer was born on 30 July 1924 in Prague-Holešovice. His two elder siblings had both died shortly after their birth, and Jindra was thus a greatly coveted only child. His mother was a housewife, and his father worked as the director of the Czechoslovak Business Import Company, which imported salt from Subcarpathian Ruthenia to Prague.
As a child he began exercising in Sokol, where he met Václav Černý, his lifelong friend, who introduced him to Scouting - to Foglar’s troop Pražská dvojka - in 1936 while they were attending Na Příkopech Grammar School. In May 1937 Jaroslav Foglar (nicknamed Jestřáb - Hawk) approached Jindřich Hojer and asked him whether he could use his name in a comic strip series, which would be published in Mladý hlasatel (Young Reporter), a youth magazine which he wrote for. Other boys became models for the other heroes of Rychlé šípy (Rapid Arrows, an enormously successful comic book series) - e.g. Václav Černý, nicknamed Černoch (Blackie - his surname means Black) was rendered as the character Červenáček (Red Cap). The five years that Hojer spent in the troop include his fondest memories. They had one troop meeting a week and an expedition on Sunday. In the summer they would go camp at Sunshine by the River Sázava. Jindřich Hojer’s father died in 1941, making the wartime years all the more difficult for the family. The witness passed his matriculation exam in 1943, and was then summoned to forced labour to clear debris in Hamburg. He avoided the summons by chance, as he was given employment by the Association for Chemical and Iron Production, and he went to work at the Research Institute of Organic Synthesis in Rybitví near Pardubice.
The year 1945 came, universities re-opened, and Jindřich Hojer began studying chemistry in Prague while retaining his job. He sees the time following February 1948 as forty years of life gone to waste. But he fully devoted himself to his beloved chemistry, his family, sports, and other hobbies.
On 1969 he passed his university candidature and lectured at the university in Pardubice. He was employed at the Institute for Organic Synthesis in Pardubice for forty-three years. Jindřich Hojer was married twice and widowed twice. When his first wife died after a protracted illness, a coincidence made him get in touch with his first great student love, they married and spent twenty-five years of happy marriage together. The witness has a daughter, two granddaughters, and three great granddaughters.
In 1986 he renewed contact with Jaroslav Foglar and his troop, they met regularly. After Foglar’s death in 2002 he and Václav Černý wrote a book called Jestřábe, díky (Thank you, Hawk). When doubts emerged concerning the authenticity of Foglar’s last will, he actively spoke out in the deceased author’s defence. In this way he also got in touch with actors from the Moravian Slovakian Theatre in Uherské Hradiště, whose theatrical rendition of Rapid Arrows has recently achieved its 400th repeat performance.
After going into pension retirement Jindřich Hojer moved to Kosmonosy. He continued to work for many more years - he taught German first at a language school, then at the Secondary Technical School of Agriculture and the Škoda Works in Mladá Boleslav. He also gave private lessons in other subjects - physics, mathematics, chemistry, and Latin. In 2014 he celebrated his ninetieth birthday in excellent condition. Jindřich Hojer died on 22 December 2020.
