When the uprising started in Hungary, we loaded everything on wagons and went there
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Břetislav Trakal was born in Tikov near Semily on 18 December 1935. He went to school in Veselá during World War II. The Gestapo arrested a local teacher Karel Hlaváček in 1943. He saw a German plane crash, and his brother was deployed on forced labour in the Reich. At the end of the war, he and his mother gave food to prisoners who had escaped from death marches. He and his mother witnessed from afar the massacre of Germans in Rovensko pod Troskami. After the war, he finished primary school in Jablonec and joined Technolen as a weaver. He refused to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and the Czechoslovak Youth Union (ČSM). He and his entire family lived in a small apartment in Tikov, which they shared with two other women, and had to sleep in the attic with a hot brick. There was no electricity still in 1952. He enlisted in 1955 and served as a tank crew member. In 1956 he was supposed to suppress the Hungarian uprising. By the time his unit arrived on the scene, the situation had calmed down and he did not take part in the intervention. After serving in the army, he continued to work at Technolen. In 2025, Břetislav Trakal lived in Černá near Lomnice nad Popelkou.
