"On the fifth of May, there was a call on the radio... for scouts to report in. And that was the house — or maybe it is the house — on the corner of Roosevelt Street and Pražská. Then there were shoes there, and today I don't even know what kind of shop is there. So there were officials from the pre-war period, and they were taking down our names. I was seventeen, so of course I thought: I have to look like a proper scout! And one of our classmates — Váša Potužník — so from this Váša I borrowed a scout lily badge, but it wasn’t an easy trip, because... on the sixth, the Americans arrived, and the square was packed with people. I was standing near the town hall, obviously mesmerized by all the activity — the tanks and everything. And I noticed how one of the gunners in the tank turret was still watching the surroundings. And then he aimed the machine gun at the church tower. Sure enough, shots started coming from that church tower. So of course, that caused a big panic. In no time, only the Americans were left in the square. I hid in the house next to the town hall, on the right-hand side. I stayed there until the Germans in the tower were silenced, and then I set off to get that lily."
"And when I was in the fifth grade, there was a major turning point in my life, because Nýřany was the last town to be occupied by the Nazis in 1938, on October 10. And I became a resident of the Great German Reich. For about a week, a very short time, we were still going to school, then, of course, the German authorities decided that we couldn't be in school any longer, so we moved to a girls' school, and we were there for a very short time too, and then the Czech school was closed completely. So at that time I experienced my first adventurous step, namely - I put on my pyjamas, put normal clothes over my pyjamas, said goodbye to my mother and went illegally across the border from Nýřany to Tlučná, where my aunt lived. And so I stayed in Tlučná for a few weeks, where I attended school again."
"They said, eight months in prison, no probation! That was a shock for me, of course. I thought: That’s not possible! I’ll appeal. Then the lawyer came to me and said, ‘Don’t appeal. There’s going to be an amnesty, and it will only apply to those who’ve been convicted with final judgment. If you appeal, you’ll miss it — and it might not go well for you either.’ So I listened to him and didn’t appeal. Well, I couldn’t wait for the 5th of May… or maybe it was the 9th of May, I just couldn’t wait. In the morning, I rushed to the newsstand for the papers, and there I read that I really did fall into the category of those covered by the amnesty — so I never even had to report to prison. But of course… the verdict was still sent to my employer."
Jaroslav Mašek, scout nickname Hadži, was born on March 2, 1928 in Nýřany. After the Munich war, Nýřany became part of the occupied Sudetenland. He was unable to finish his studies at the eight-year high school and therefore went to a photo studio, where he stayed until the end of the war. Immediately after the Second World War, in May 1945, he founded the Blue River Scout Troop in Pilsen, later renamed Bílá střela. After graduating from industrial school, he was accepted at the Czech Technical University in Prague, where he successfully graduated with the degree of Ing. After Junák was banned in 1953, he founded an illegal scout troop in Prague under the name Dynamo Praha. In 1960, he was repeatedly interrogated by State Security, accused of subversion of the republic and sentenced to eight months without parole. Thanks to an amnesty that year, he did not have to go to prison, but he had to leave his job in a construction project in Pilsen. During his lifetime, Jaroslav Mašek changed many professions: from a bricklayer to an employee of a photo studio, a designer, a teacher at an industrial school to a co-owner of a company dealing with advertising and city information systems. In 1968, he re-established the Pilsen Scout Troop, which functioned until Junák was banned again in 1970. After November 1989, in addition to scouting (Jožka Knapp’s centre), he was also involved in municipal politics, was deputy mayor of Pilsen and, together with his sons, founded Daruma, a company dealing with advertising and municipal information systems. He died on November 31, 2024.
