Major (ret.) Václav Rubeš

* 1930  †︎ 2012

  • The garrison was only about 12 men strong, but very well armed. So with the help of my liaison we surrounded the school and disarmed the Germans. They had to stay there because there was no way we could have transported them away. The instructions were: ‘disarm, isolate, guard’. And so we did. What is it worth when reinforcements arrived. Strong reinforcement.”

  • They wanted me to tell them much more than I actually knew. They asked me if I had collaborated with the functionaries in Prague, in Bratislava. If I had established contact with abroad. They wanted to know whether I had had the possibility to pass on any information across the Czechoslovak border. They wanted to set me a trap, to learn about my collaborators. They said that they knew that I had been in touch with some people, that they just needed me to confirm the names of those persons. They told me to reveal the names. They said that they knew about them anyway. Just to tell them the names to confirm it. But I knew that they were just faking it, that they didn’t know anything, so I didn’t say a word. I didn’t give anybody away.”

  • I was accompanying the transports of the Germans, making sure that nobody escapes from the transport. These were German POWs and I was one of the youngest guards. At the age of sixteen, I was given a gun and told to watch the Germans to make sure nobody runs away. When my mom found out about it, she was terribly mad at me. She forbid me to do it. She said: ‘don’t you realize that you could abuse it?’ These were no small transports.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Skautské múzeum v Ružomberku (SKM) - nyní Skautské múzeum Václava Rubeša v Ružomberku , 19.05.2010

    (audio)
    duration: 55:05
    media recorded in project Witnesses of the Oppression Period
  • 2

    Skautské múzeum v Ružomberku (SKM) - nyní Skautské múzeum Václava Rubeša v Ružomberku , 18.09.2012

    (audio)
    duration: 01:30:04
    media recorded in project A Century of Boy Scouts
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I’m the disciple of Baden-Powell, not of the Pionýr

Václav Rubeš
Václav Rubeš
photo: http://www.kpv-praha15.wz.cz/soubory_PDF/Vaclav_Rubes%20.pdf

Václav Rubeš, by his Scout name Akela, was born on January 29, 1930. He became a Scout in 1938 in Lomnice nad Popelkou and remained a Scout until the forceful dissolution of the organization. At the end of WWII, he became actively engaged in the antifascist resistance movement with the guerilla group “Kozlov”. In June 1945, he completed the mentoring course. He became a Cub-Scout troop leader and later was elected deputy-leader of the Scout organization in Lomnice nad Popelkou. In 1948, he was elected leader of the organization. He held this position until the ban on Scouting. Because he kept entertaining contacts with a group of faithful Scouts even after Scouting had been banned, he was investigated by the secret state police (StB) for suspected subversive activities. He was subjected to a number of interrogations and the police agents also searched his home and confiscated many of his Scout items and most importantly, the books from his Scout library. In the end of the 1950s, he was repeatedly investigated and subsequently dismissed from service as an officer of the Czechoslovak Socialist Peoples’ Army. In March 1968, he began to organize the reconstitution of the Scout in Ružomberok and was elected district Scout leader. On March 11, 1968, he was elected regional Scout leader of the Podtatranská region. However, for holding this position he had to leave his job. Moreover, persecutions for the whole family were to become their daily reality until 1989, when he again stood at the forefront of the reconstitution of the Scout in Ružomberok, Liptovský Mikuláš and Slovakia in general. He was elected district leader and instructor of the forest school. At the 4th assembly of Slovak Scouts on 22 February 1997, he was elected leader of the SLSK and the delegates of the 5th assembly chose him as the leader of the Slovak Scout organization. On February 22, 1997, after many years of preparations, he inaugurated a museum of Scouting in Ružomberok and became its curator. In 2003, he initiated the creation of the Scout University which has been since offering systematic education to Rover and Old-Scout students (the text has been taken over and edited from the publication Václav Rubeš: “They were there”, published by the Scout Museum in Ružomberok, 2008, page 7).