“As kids, we would go collect hand grenades in 1946. With a little hay wagon, we were walking the vineyards where the Russians had had their trenches when they were shooting from there down to Pasohlávky; they could not be attacked up there. We, the kids, were loading these hand grenades on the cart. We were with certain Franta Rámus as they called him, he was a young guy, a policeman, and we were picking the hand grenades in the vineyards and carrying them on the wagon down the road to Pískoviště. We brought some wood there and then ducked on the other side to keep ourselves protected, and Franta had these grenades explode there.”
“The floods there were not particularly dangerous. The water would spill out as if from a plate. We would thrust sticks in the ground and observe the water rising. It stayed there for a week in spring and then the water flew away.Then when thunderstorms came at the end of May or in June, the water level increased, but it was gone after three days. The water was rising in places where there were meadows. The agricultural cooperative then turned the meadows into fields and destroyed the channels which used to channel the water away, and then there was more damage. But still, there were just a few houses where they would get water all the way into the house.”
“I was a technician at that time and they placed a paper in front of me, as a test. Do you agree, do you disagree, why do you disagree, why do you agree. I took the paper and crossed the text to show that I refused to reply. And as soon as in 1969, I was already doing dirty work with the blacksmith. I was a hunter, and they confiscated my rifle. I didn’t want to obey.”
“He was to be cremated in Brno on August 22, and since he was a Party Member, communists placed a wreath on his coffin. We had no grave yet, and so we brought the wreaths home from Brno and I thought: ´Dad was cremated, and so I will burn the wreaths as well.´ But the Party chairman came to my mother and told her that Rudolf should give the wreath to the Red Army monument. It was on August 22, 1968! I took him aside and told him that if he wished to have the wreath there, he would have to carry it there himself. I burnt the other wreaths in the backyard. And this one was the last one, and so I threw it to the fire, too. You should have seen what happened!”
“Since 1960, nobody was allowed to repair anything, they did not allow windows replacement or anything like that. We were all summoned by Mr. Sláma, a clerk from the district committee, who gave us this choice: ´You will either build a house, or buy a house somewhere else.´ We were in our thirties, and it was easy for us, and we started with construction of that housing estate. We held together, nearly all the people here are originally from Mušov.”
I do not regret leaving Mušov, but I will never forget my village
Rudolf Suchánek
photo: Dobová fotografie z achrivu pamětníka, současná fotografie pořízena po rozhovoru s pamětníkem
photo: Dobová fotografie z achrivu pamětníka, současná fotografie pořízena po rozhovoru s pamětníkem
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Rudolf Suchánek was born June 13, 1937 in Bystrc near Brno. In autumn 1945 when he was eight years old he moved with his parents to the South Moravian border region, where the family settled in an agricultural farm in the formerly German village Mušov. Rudolf studied elementary school in Mušov and in Dolní Dunajovice, and then he continued at an agricultural school in Diváky. He started a family after his return from the army service and he worked in Brno for a brief time, but he soon returned to Mušov. He got a job in the local agricultural cooperative, and later in the State Farm Mikulov, where he worked as an agronomist. His problems with the communist regime began after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. He faced pressure at work due to his disagreement with the country’s occupation and he was demoted to the position of a tractor driver. His daughter was barred from studying a secondary school, and he was not allowed to be active in any local clubs. Since the first half of the 1960s, Rudolf and his neighbours became helpless witnesses of gradual destruction of Mušov, which the socialist planning system designated to be flooded during the construction of the new reservoir Nové Mlýny. Although there were several plans for saving the village, Mušov was razed to the ground and flooded in the late 1970s in spite of protests from the villagers and nature conservationists. In 1977, Rudolf Suchánek and his family moved from Mušov to the nearby village Pasohlávky where many other citizens from the flooded village resettled as well. He died in Pasohlávky on June 21, 2014.
