Vít Kvapil

* 1936

  • “I had to attend a course of Morse code when I was sixteen or seventeen years old. We had a lot of work at home but they ordered it, so I had to go to a pub in Postřelmov. There were training keys and we had to study Morse code. I had fifty-six kilograms when I started my military service. But everything was done - we had sugar beet and potatoes. Everything was done. However, my mum did not want to believe that her son would be accepted for military service. So she went to see the head officer to Šumperk, his name was Ryšavý and she asked him to postpone my military service for at least a year.”

  • “I wrote my parents. I experienced something in Chrastice because I went to see farmers who I knew and who had horses - I always liked horses. And I experienced what they did to those farmers. Because there were either villages or fields in South Bohemian Region and there was for example a farm in the middle of it. Well and mainly people from Prague who were horrible evicted the farmers to forests during collectivization. If a woman was wearing something gold, they took it away from her. Watch, everything. And they took them to a forest. They did not care about how they would live. They were not allowed to return there.”

  • “Victorious February? My dad said that it was a disaster. It was dangerous. Because what communists managed to do due to the Soviet Union was to ruin the nation. They made villages and everything poor. Because they announced: ‘Who is not with us, is against us!‘ And everything belonged to everyone and nothing belonged to anyone. And so it ended like this. I think that it was the biggest disaster that people experienced here. In my opinion.”

  • “Germans were asking for an awful lot of ratios, they made everything very strict but otherwise we had a German mayor. His name was Slezák, if that is true I don’t know now. And he was not too bad. There was a dancing room here in the changing room as it was. He always came to have a look and said:,Darken the windows would you, so that they do not see and turn it down.´ And if someone was killing an animal, a young cow or something, he was always there. He would always say:,You cannot do that without me.‘ As people tell on each other and they do the same today as they did back then.“

  • “Well and then some kind of a chap in the region or someone envious was asking about the fact I left to cooperative so I had to attend a meeting in Šumperk and some Fojt from Hoštejn was talking about the fact a man, who was born here in agriculture left here and went to engineering. So they let me choose from about five companies. And so I took a bike to return to the ditch in but I met a friend, who worked in Prefa in Postřelmov before and he said: ,Come and join us, it is constructions too after all!‘ So I went there and the director in Prefa was called to the region and said: ,I did not know that so I hired him.‘ So I never left from there.“

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    byt pamětníka - Sudkov, 19.04.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 26:52
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Olomouc, 05.02.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 02:12:33
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

When he saw the way Action Kulak took place, he wanted his parents to hand their farm in without resistance

Vít Kvapil
Vít Kvapil
photo: archiv pamětníka

Vít Kvapil was born on 14 February 1936 in Sudkov in Šumperk district. The village was part of imperial Sudetenland and the family lived there alongside German citizens. When he was five years old, Vít experience bullying from local Hitler Youth who had fun physically attacking Czech children. His father Vít Kvapil financially supported an apolitical resistance organization National Association of Czechoslovak Patriots. He had great luck that he escaped cruel interrogations and subsequent imprisonment when mass arrests of active members of this illegal group took place in 1944. The Kvapils owned a big farm with fields and farm animals. Vít personally saw consequences of Action K (“Kulak”) during his military service in South Bohemian Region. He immediately wrote a letter home so that his family would not be against joining a cooperative. When he returned from the military service, the family property already belonged to state. Vít Kvapil worked in the united agricultural cooperative his whole life. He and his wife Zdislava raised three daughters.