František Jiroušek

* 1924

Forced labour during the WW2, Witnesses of local events connected to WWII, Witness of local events from the Communist era
1. 9. 1939 - The outbreak of the WW2, 1944 - 1945 - The liberation of Czechoslovakia, 1948 - 1955 - Politic lawsuit in the Stalin age, 25. 2. 1948 - Communist coup d‘état in ČSR, 21. 8. 1968 - Invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, 17. 4. 1969 – A. Dubček’s resignation, start of the “normalisation” period, 17. 11. - 29. 12. 1989 - The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia
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    I have to remain human, otherwise I'm quitting

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    "I wish that the human brain would primarily lead people to human behavior, to that rail of good. Every society, every civilization, always progresses to a certain point and disappears. Why? Because what happens there is that that beauty, which can be in every person, stops functioning between people. And that evil starts to become dominant over people and becomes worse and worse. How many civilizations have disappeared? How will our civilization end? It would be good, if people realized, that to remain human, or to have in oneself that measure, when my brain will tell me that you can do this, but you cannot do this anymore... I think, that it is the goal of a person, when one realizes this in oneself, when one comes to know oneself, where one can go or cannot, that it is still in the measure of let us say humanity, or in the measure, where one can say, that one is a human and has not stepped over the bounds of good values."

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    For the first time we realized, that we only had each other

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    "Of course our parents were scared. And for me it was my first trip away from home. All that time until the year 1942 I had only ever been in Rohozná. And this was the first time when we had been separated from our families. Of course our mothers cried for us. We were young boys, and so we took it as an adventure. The first big German city, which stayed in my head, was Nuremberg. It was there that we first saw the horrors of war, the bombed out city. In our coupé there were also about four girls with us. When they saw the devastation, they cried. We comforted them and caressed their hair. And you could say that already there... that true friendship was formed..., when we realized, that we were depending on one another."

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    Prayers could be heard in the bunker, we were starting to get scared

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    "We went into the bunker just as we were. We left everything above. After about half an hour the lights suddenly went out and some sort of deep rumbling started. We knew that things were getting brutal. We could see nervousness on the Germans who were with us in the bunker. Suddenly the doors flew open and into the bunker, into that beer brewery's cellar, huge clouds of dust were blown inside. We knew that things were bad. There was darkness for about half an hour, we did not know what was going on. Occasionally you could hear prayers coming from various corners of the bunker... We were starting to get scared. Then an air raid serviceman ran in there. He started shouting: 'Alles raus, alles raus.' That means: 'Everything outside, everything outside'. Of course the Germans went first, we lined up behind them. Forty steps led outside. When we came out, there was hell all around us. The entire courtyard of the brewery was on fire. All four buildings. In the administrative building there was a drive-through, which went from the courtyard out onto the Neckarstrasse street. In the drive-through a fireman stood and was squirting water against us and we were running out onto the street under that stream of water. I ran out onto the Neckarstrasse and you could say, that every building there was was on fire. On one hand it was an awesome sight, that the Germans were finally getting beaten up. Whether we wanted to or not, we had it in us, we were happy, that the war was finally coming to an end, that Germany was losing. On the other hand it was truly horrific."

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    Jihlava, 01.02.2019

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I have to remain human, otherwise I’m quitting

František Jiroušek
František Jiroušek
photo: Karolina Antlová
photo: Karolina Antlová
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František Jiroušek was born on the 20th of September 1924 in Rohozná in the Vysočina region. Together with his other siblings he grew up in the family of a blacksmith. During the Second World War he was totally mobilized into Germany. He survived the destructive bombing of Stuttgart and the widespread of the complex, in which he lived with the others who had been transported there. Near the end of the war he hid in a bomb shelter in his birth village. However, likely due to being given away, he was discovered. Paradoxically he survived thanks to his father’s death. He experienced firsthand the pressure of the communist regime after February 1948. Despite that he later became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. But in his own words he never held much faith in the regime. He tried to “float through” the system, mostly because of his one son, but who he prematurely lost. Presently he lives with his wife in a seniors’ home in Jihlava.

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