“In Munich we witnessed as they were dragging people on the sidewalk, they were probably Jews. I didn’t go out too much. The Polish people were being kept locked inside, but they would always climb over the fence and engage in trade. I was not selling anything, I didn’t need anything. I tried to get out and I was thinking of some way to get home. This is the first thing you want when you are in a foreign country and you see the helplessness. It is hard, it is a struggle. There were many people who were escaping from Starý Rožmitál, and all of them died. One of them survived and he probably survived the prison, but three or four others died.”
“They were attempting to nationalise it all the time, to take something and steal our property. This went on until 1950, until the end of 1950. What they did then was that all small traders, like barbers, and all these professionals with small businesses, were forced to join communal service centres. It was only for some time, so that they would get the people, and the things and property, and then they were doing it as they wanted, according to their own plans and needs, as the communists were doing at that time.”
“A convoy of Germans was riding from Věšín all the way here to Rožmitál. The people from Rožmitál suddenly turned into heroes, because the Americans were in Voltuše or even further, and this was not their territory. The people walked to the Old Town cemetery with weapons, intending to shoot the Germans there. One man fired at them and the Germans shot a blast into the wall. The people from Rožmitál all fled at once, and one of them, the former teacher Dušek, was trying to hide and as he was running over the fields to Hutě, he was screaming: ‘Save your souls, save your souls, the Germans are already here!’”
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Rožmitál pod Třemšínem, domov pro seniory, 14.08.2014
photo: dobové foto - archiv pamětníka, současné foto Jakub Anderle
photo: dobové foto - archiv pamětníka, současné foto Jakub Anderle
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Karel Trčka was born February 18, 1923 in Rožmitál pod Třemšínem. His father started a transportation business there in 1931. After completing elementary school, Karel began his vocational training as a machine fitter, but in 1942 he had to interrupt his training when he was summoned to do forced labour in Munich. He worked there on the construction of a factory hall for the BMW company. Using a pretext that he had to visit his dying mother, he returned home without permission after two months. He found a job in the labour camp in the village Kolvín (Příbram district). The people from the village were forced to leave during the war and the German administration established a farm in one part of the village. Within the farm there was also an area which was used for maintenance of machinery for a logging company that was clearing large areas of forest after a massive damage caused by a windstorm. Karel Trčka worked there as a driver and later in the facility for vehicle repairs. His father Karel Trčka Sr. was listening to radio broadcast from the West in the restaurant of the Plzeňka Hotel in Havlíčkova Street in Rožmitál pod Třemšínem together with other people, but somebody informed upon them and in 1943 he was sentenced to nine months of imprisonment. In 1944 Karel Trčka married Milada Fousová from Věšín and he found a job in Rožmitál in Karel Valenta’s company, which dealt with wood processing. Immediately after the war Karel began his eight-month military service in Pilsen, where he served as a driver and he was assigned to serve in extra reserves. From 1946 until its confiscation in 1950 the Trčka family was running their transportation business. Afterwards Karel worked in the company Agrostroj Rožmitál where he stayed until his retirement and even as a retiree he later worked for several years in the company Kovo Věšín. Karel Trčka died on August 28, 2014.
