“Over time we were deployed on twenty-five air raids. The action, or deployment, was usually like this: The first wave of the raid was fire bombs. They used two types of bombs. There were what we called the ‘pencils’ and then the glue bombs. The ‘pencils’ were dropped in packages. They were released at about ten kilometres high, so when the container bottom opened its contents would disperse over several tens of metres, and where they hit, there was a burning spot every couple of meters away. The Elektron firebombs made a burning patch, shining with bright white light that would gradually burn through all floors of a house…”
“That was rather interesting. Czech paratroopers had executed the Nazi Protector Heydrich shortly before. On the days just before the exams, before going to school, we would listen to the street radio announcing the numbers and names of people executed for approving the assassination. We knew there would be Nazi supervisors during the exams and that their only task would be ensuring that one-third of each school would fail. There were twenty-nine of us in the class and ten actually failed. So it was a huge success for me that I passed and got the certificate, with seven “4” grades on it.”
“Just as we were reaching the shelter, a local lady was running ahead of us. She was holding a child in one hand and a big suitcase in the other. Back then you would go to the shelter with a suitcase with something to eat and wear in it in case your house was damaged. Her other child, a boy of four, maybe, was holding on to the suitcase and running along. I was running with a friend, one Josef Řeháček from Prague-Libeň; he was such a Libeň dandy. When he saw the lady dragging the children and the suitcase, he grabbed the four-year-old running next to her. I grabbed the suitcase and we reached the shelter together with her, getting her in safely. She was pretty scared, and so were we. But that was the only time in our lives when we were running for a shelter so late.”
“There was no water for the kitchen, so the first thing I did was grabbing a dowsing rod and searching for water. As I was walking there with the rod, two guys with layout sticks would walk beside, using any sticks they could find, and they stuck them where they saw signs. And I had already found the spot for the well, when suddenly a group of officers together with my college mate Zdeněk Vopička came up to us. The highest one in charge asked what I was doing. I say, ‘I need a well for the kitchen, so I’m searching for water.’ ‘And how is that done?’ So I handed him my rod. The other officers wanted to try it out too, so I had to cut like five rods. And they all walked with the rods and were surprised if it worked for someone...”
Zdeněk Šolar was born to the family of Josef Šollar, a former legionnaire in Russia, in Louny on 2 August 1924. In May 1927, the Managing Board of Prague’s Legiobanka commissioned the witness’ father Mr Zdeněk Sr. to oversee the repayment of the increasing debt of the Kavalier glassworks, so the family relocated to the little town of Sázava in Central Bohemia. The witness spent his pre-school years in the glassmaking environment, visiting his father at work. At five years of age (1929) he became a member of Sokol and took liking to rhythmic exercises. He enrolled in the primary school in Sázava in 1930 and then progressed to the First High School in Sázava. Having passed an additional exam, he went on to study a high school in Prague-Holešovice’s Strossmayerovo Square. He graduated during WWI, in the difficult Heydrichiad period of 1942. He went on to work at glassworks in Sázava as a locksmith apprentice, although he had originally intended to study at a university. Tertiary schools were closed during the Nazi occupation. In 1942 he was deployed on forced labour in the Reich; he left for Germany on 8 October and was chosen for a firefighter training in Remscheid. Once his training was completed he relocated with his fire brigade to Duisburg’s Meiderich quarter. He and his mates helped to put out fires caused by the air raids on Remscheid, Duisburg, Essen, Bonn and Wuppertal. He experienced some twenty-five air raids in total. In the autumn of 1944 he was relocated to Prague and witnessed the bombing of the Vysočany quarter at the end of the war. He enrolled for utility engineering studies in 1945, focusing on water management and culture, and he was employed at Vodní stavby after graduation, working at the Křižanovice-Práčov dam on the Chrudimka River. He married Vlasta Faltejsková in 1952, then worked at the Lipno II dam, and joined the Sázava glassworks again in 1959, this time at VHJ Technické sklo. He led the company’s design centre, retired in 1984 and then taught at a vocational school in Sázava. Later on he provided supervision to investment projects undertaken by the local municipal authority. He was awarded the Sázava Municipal Award for his activities in 2009. Zdeněk Šolar passed away on September, the 21st, 2018.
