Jan Odstrčil

* 1937

  • “There was a Russian officer with them and some young women were standing there with him in the garden. And as a mortar was firing, a mine flew into the garden. The Russian officer hit the deck because it whistles. I and my older brother Hynek were sitting at our house and we ran to hide in the cellar when it started to whistle. But the young women were foolishly standing there and the mine tore them apart.”

  • “A Russian officer came and he was drunk. We could see that he was drunk, he was pointing his chrome revolver at mum and asking where his horse was? Mum said: ’I don´t have a horse.’ So, h went to the cowshed, kicked the door out and there was only a heifer. And he went on asking: ’Where is my horse?’ Then he went out, there was a dressing station. They had some horses so they had to harness them and go to look for the horse with him.”

  • “The oldest brother wanted to be a priest but because we were in Germany [in Sudetenland], he could not study at grammar school, so he played the priest at home and he sent us for strawberries to perform Communion with strawberries. The first strawberries were always in the direction of Postřelmůvek in the field margin, so we went there and picked them and put them on straws. But when we went home, there was a man who was sitting and tearing the grass. He had a machine gun with a drum magazine and spoke German to us: ‘Halt!‘ I pretended not to understand him and wanted to go away but my brother pulled me off. Well, he said he had to shoot us so that we did not give him away...”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Jeseník, 03.07.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 02:02:12
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
  • 2

    Jeseník, 05.07.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:18:18
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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I and my brother watched the bustle in the village square and the Germans escaping the front line

ID picture from 1970
ID picture from 1970
photo: archiv pamětníka

Jan Odstrčil was born on the 30th of August 1937 in the village of Svébohov in the area of Šumperk. He comes from seven children, both sisters died shortly after they were born, so he spent his childhood in his native home with his four brothers - Josef, Boleslav, Hynek and Oldřich. His mother Jindřiška, née Valíková worked in the field, his father Josef worked as a workman in a stone pit. However, his father Josef did not have a job during the time of German occupation of the border areas. The Nazis employed him in Ústí nad Labem which is 250 kilometres away and they saw each other only from time to time during the war. As a little boy, Jan Odstrčil witnessed several partisan and anti-partisan operations during World War II, some of his relatives were also resistance fighters. Even today, he still remembers liberation by the Soviet army which was connected with shelling of Svébohov and casualties that were also in his family. He studied at boarding vocational school in Mohelnice after war and he stayed there afterwards to work as a milling machine operator in Moravian Electrical Plants (the MEZ company). From there, he was at his own request transferred to nearer Postřelmov and he worked for the MEZ company till his retirement. He joined an automotive troop in Čáslav as a Tatra 111 driver in 1956. A cooperative was established in Svébohov one year after he joined the military service and the family lost their farm owing to collectivization. Having finished his military service, he returned to work for the MEZ company where he met his future wife Marie Bednářová. The wedding took place in 1962 and they raised daughters Kateřina and Marie together. He had to participate in mandatory military trainings every two years between 1964 and 1970, he was taking part in one of them during the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. He took part in strikes in the MEZ company in November 1989. Jan Odstrčil and his wife lived in the village of Jedlí near to his native Svébohov in the time of shooting (in 2020).