Bedřich Huml

* 1945

  • “Among other things, I was sawing for people. It suited me a little. Normalization was such a time. People were telling on me that I was sawing illegally, which I actually was. But I could lie so well! I was to all the courts. I was in Beroun, in Pribram, in Rokycany. Someone has always told on me. I got there as a witness when I was sawing it. That was exactly the same as the accusation. It was according to the paragraph on helping to steal socialist property. I always said I saw the paper. They said, 'You couldn't see it.' I replied that I just saw it and I kept saying the same thing.”

  • “The Warsaw Pact troops arrived and suddenly everything was different. In Zaječov, later known as Brežněves, the highest officials began to carry water and bread. The barrel tank with ball cartridge was heading directly into our kitchen in the mill. If somebody had pulled something, we would have been killed. They were in Zaječov maybe half a year. They destroyed everything there. The apiary was robbed.”

  • “The rocket fell, close to Ralsko. It was like a German V-2. It was flying on kerosene. It was 14 meters high when it stood on the tank chassis. I had a nice experience there. We always left at one o'clock at night with our captain in Tatra. One Tatra, a semi-tractor, was driving in the front, then a dropside truck. It was forty tons. The rocket was empty, it was just a sheet metal, but the chassis weighed the most.”

  • “These pastors, behind our house, near the forest, were digging a trench for a tank with small field shovels. Everything there is rocky. They didn't say a word until they were done. They had it so by faith. The other soldiers said, 'When we were down and we wanted to run away or hang ourselves somewhere, we went to the pastors. They comforted us that it would change and the regime could not do it that way. ' There were three hundred of them. Then they threw them out of there. The members of PTP (Technical auxiliary battalion) left at 1954.”

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    v Plzni, 20.01.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:25:06
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
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A boy from a mill

Bedřich Huml in 2020
Bedřich Huml in 2020
photo: Vladimír Vítek

Bedřich Huml was born on May 19, 1945 in Zaječov to a miller family of Josef and Jarmila Huml. As a child he experienced events after 1948. In Zaječov he met members of the Auxiliary Technical Battalions. The family was painfully affected by the abolition of trades and the subsequent monetary reform in 1953. After finishing elementary school in Zaječov, he joined a mechanical engineering school in Hořovice. He completed his military service in the years 1964 - 1966 at the 311th Heavy Artillery Brigade. He served as a pointer at the missile ensemble R - 170 in NATO code SS - 1, SCUD - A. In the army he met his first wife Jaroslava, whom he married after returning from the military service. Shortly afterwards, his first son Bedřich was born. At that time, the witness worked as a constructor in the Alba Hořovice company. He was not politically involved. In his free time, he played football and drummed with the band at village events. In August 1968 he witnessed the arrival of the occupation troops in Zaječov and related events. In the seventies he worked in the production cooperative Civic Services at MNV Zaječov. Public security investigated Bedřich for suspected theft of socialist property. He was never convicted. While working he also built a family house. In the summer of 1978, he got divorced and then married a new partner, Helena, who gave him a daughter and a son. In 1986 he persuaded the family to sell the mill to the state-owned enterprise “Obnova památek” (Restoration of Monuments). In the same year he began working for the company. He traveled to Bavaria with a tourist visa and illegally worked on contracts negotiated by his employer. After November 1989 he bought the mill back and privatized it. He founded a carpentry company with his sons, with whom he reconstructed the Točník castle. He retired in 2007. He worked in the Zděná association, which is gradually reconstructing the historic building of a former coaching inn at Zaječov 33, and he is currently co-organizes an annual meeting of the former PTP members in Zaječov.