“I remember that when the war was drawing to the end, dad arrived home. We were specifically told not to talk about it anywhere. When the original factory in Germany had been bombed out, father got transferred from Vienna to Dubnice nad Váhom, where there was another underground factory for aircraft engines. The production there still continued. Dad ran away from there just before the end of the war. When the war front was approaching, he was in the militia in Rokycany. The guys were watching the roads and guarding the town from Germans who were leaving Czechoslovakia and who might do some harm in Rokycany. Mom was bringing dry clothes for him there, because it was raining all the time and they were lying there on the ground and guarding the roads. When the war ended, our life got better because dad returned home and began earning money. He worked in the rolling-mill in Rokycany, it was called ‘walcwerk,’ and he was getting a regular pay, whereas during the time when he had been doing forced labour in Germany, my mom and I were only getting one ten-Crown voucher a week.”
“My name is Vladimír Lihun, I was born on 5th March 1938, a short time before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1942 my father was sent to Germany to do forced labour. He worked in the factory FO Werke which produced aircraft engines. From that time – from 1942 until the end of the war – we lived alone with my mom and sister. It was a difficult time. In summer when there was nothing left to eat, mom would put me in a pram and take my sister and we would walk from Rokycany to Raková. A farmer lived there, and mom was helping him with planting potatoes in spring and with harvesting them in autumn. When we went back home, the farmer’s wife would sometimes give bread to my mom. It is hard for me to talk about that it, I might even start crying. My mom was doing all kinds of work; she was making bags from straw, for instance.”
“There was a brickyard next to it. I will later show you fragments from the bombs; I keep them in a little wooden case. There was one air raid on the Škoda factory around 27th April 1944, and on the train station in Rokycany. On that day, a bomb hit the corner of the Sokol’s gym in Rokycany, and we could see straight into the puppet theatre they had there. There was a hole made by the blast and you could see the puppets hanging inside the theatre there. During the air raid on the train station in Rokycany, the blast made little funnel-shaped holes in the wall. We were little boys and we were then going to the station and picking these pieces of the wall with shrapnel in them. I still keep them, and in my child’s handwriting it is written on the box that they are bomb fragments from the air raids on 24th – 27th April 1944.”
Vladimír Lihun was born March 5, 1938. In 1942 his father was sent to Germany to do forced labour. Vladimír’s mother thus cared for him and his sister alone. The family suffered great poverty and they lived in so-called emergency housing. In spring 1945 their father came back from Germany and he joined the self-organized militia in Rokycany. Its members guarded entry roads to the town in early May 1945 in order to prevent Germans from getting into Rokycany. When Vladimír’s father began to work in a rolling-mill after the war, the family’s situation improved and they moved to a better apartment. In 1946 they followed the government’s call for people willing to settle the border regions. They moved to Rájec u Pňovan in western Bohemia. Vladimír began to learn industrial ceramic production when he completed his compulsory school education, but he did not enjoy it and he eventually became a postman. He later worked in many other professions - operating a drill in the Škoda factory, as a tractor driver in a unified agricultural cooperative, as a company chauffeur or as a lorry driver. He also holds the qualification of a music band-master. Vladimír worked on updating the village photo-chronicle. Vladimír Lihun died on December 27th, 2022.
