Karel Suchý

* 1931

National minorities, Victim of forced relocation, Repatriated
5. – 9. 5. 1945 - Prague Uprising, 18. 4. - 10. 5. 1945 - osvobození západní části ČSR americkou armádou
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    In the Petschek Palace

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    duration: 00:26
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    „Gestapo was in there. They locked me and beat me up. The second day they opened the cell and there was a gestapo man who knew my mother and me too. So they let go of the beating and put me elsewhere, they apologized and I got proper food.“

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    Escape to Germany

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    duration: 00:39
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    „We had to march on foot as there was no public transport back then. Everything, including roads, was destroyed. There was no transportation, the water was not flowing, the gas was no available, terrible – well, just after war. So I got there in ten days. My grandma lived there, and my aunt as well who lived in Berlin. As Berlin was bombed by Americans, she went to live straight to Freiberg. So I got there and they rejoiced over me. And they asked where mum was. I replied: ‚I lost mum, and don’t know where she is.‘“

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    Bullying in Hitlerjugend

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    duration: 00:35
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    „They knew I went to Czech school, those German kids. And there were children of the gestapo men. Every day they waited for me after the lessons in front of school and bullied me. They wrote ‚Czech swine‘ on a label and stuck it on to my back, they´d beat me up a bit and so on. So you probably know how I felt. They said: ‚If you tell mum anything, we´ll shoot you‘, and showed me a pistol.“

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    Praha, 24.11.2015

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I escaped from Germany three times

Karel Suchý
Karel Suchý
photo: Pamět Národa - Archiv
photo: Pamět Národa - Archiv
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Karel Suchý was born on 23 June, 1931 in Freiberg in Germany. He spent his childhood in children homes in Dresden. His mother didn’t care for him as a bastard child. He moved to Prague at the age of nine with his mother going to her new husband. There he went to a Czech elementary school, after his stepfather died, he was forced together with his mother to give up Czech citizenship and Karel attended the Hitlerjugend. At the end of war fourteen year old Karel was captured by the gestapo. After liberation of Czechoslovakia he was displaced three times to Germany, from where he always came back. Finally he got a repatriation permit and has stayed in Bohemia ever since.

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Photos (3)
  • Karel Suchý in 2015
    Karel Suchý in 2015
  • Pupils from Josef Seifert's primary school in Prague with Karel Suchý
    Pupils from Josef Seifert's primary school in Prague with Karel Suchý
  • Karel Suchý
    Karel Suchý
    photo: Pamět Národa - Archiv
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Karel Suchý

  • date:
    18.02.2016
  • medium type:
    Internet
  • medium name:
    Příběhy našich sousedů