Jan Štach

* 1925  †︎ 2019

  • When they came, I learned about the Sudeten Germans. When I was in the third year of the Gymnázium, it was on 15th March, when the German soldiers arrived in Vsetín. They were not Sudeten Germans, Sudetenland was only in the North-West of Bohemia and according to the Celts it was called the Mountains of Wild Pigs. We had to go out to welcome the German soldiers, but we lowered our ties “half the mast“. And then I learned that the Germans (in Vsetín lived about 20 of them) shouting Heil Hitler, Sieg Heil welcomed the German soldiers with excitement. The second time when I learned about the Sudeten Germans was when they came to arrest my brother. My brother was not at home. There came three Gestapo Germans from Brno. One of them spoke Czech, was holding a pistol in his hand and was yelling at us that he would shoot us all. I refused to do something and he slapped me wih such a might that I fell onto the floor. My mother was crying and the Sudeten German was shouting at her that she had badly raised her son. And there was a German who could not speak a word of Czech and he was touching her in a friendly way so as not to cry. This was how I learned that the Sudeten Germans were much worse than the Germans. I even had some friends in Germany, transferred, and that´s why I don´t like the politician who used to be the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Schwarzenberg, because he apologized to the Germans. Or he instigated Václav Havel to apologize. They should deserve a death sentence for what they had done to us.

  • As the war approached or was coming to an end, partisans came to Moravian Wallachia from Sovakia, with their commander Ušiak. But he was betrayed and killed and Murzin took over. Petr Buďko was another one I used to know. A captain who became a partisan when he fell off the plane. He was a pilot. I liked him and got to know him at the beginning of the year 45. He spoke about president Beneš and how he met him in Moscow. They slept in our small room under the roof where the commander of the Obrana národa Mr Lorenc from Zlín was hiding and where they held their meetings. My brother protected them from the Gestapo and brought them to Slovakia because he walked about the forest and knew it well. There they hid and slept at night.

  • Something more about how I wrote poetry. As a poet beginner, I went to Zlín. It was the actor Ilja Prachař who led the group. Well, he liked the group very much and used to say that poems should always contain a story. I also met the writer Jan Drda who told me not to become a writer because it was very hard work. He also had to write speeches for Gottwald but then in the year sixty-eight they threw him out of everything. I met his daughter (when I was getting some materials at the ŘEMPO organization) who was eployed there under a false name..

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    v domě pamětníka v Pozděchově u Vizovic, 06.11.2015

    (audio)
    duration: 52:41
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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Patriotism

Jan serving in the army, portrait, Opava/Krnov, 1948
Jan serving in the army, portrait, Opava/Krnov, 1948
photo: archiv pamětníka

Jan Štach was born on 29th September 1925 at Pozděchov, Moravian Wallachia. He grew up in a protestant family with four more children as the youngest of them. His parents owned some land and Jan had to help since his childhood. After completing his 5th class of the local school, he went on to study at the Masaryk Gymnasium in Vsetín. When he was 15, the Gestapo arrested his older brother Slávek who was an active member of the Defence of the Nation organization and the Štach family was hiding partisans. Slávek, whom Jan deeply admired, was sentenced and died in prison. Jan continued helping the partisans and and the atrocities committed at Prlov and Ploština villages by the Germans strongly influenced his further life and literary work. Jan became a farmer and later worked at the local co-operative. He continued writing poetry and theatre plays for the regional press and was active in education of the public - against smoking and Sudeten Germans. He worked in many public functions. Afer 1968, due to a poem printed in the regional paper, he was deprived of the Communist Party membership. The witness is the author of a number of publications and theatre plays with the topics of WWII.