Bohumil Venclík

* 1924

  • “We had a great teacher of geography and history. On 15 March he came into the classroom and said: ‘Children, stand up, we’ll sing the anthem. Our republic ended last night, the Germans are occupying it. We will be independent no more.’ We ended school in June thirty-nine. Here in Tovačov there’s a monument to those who died in World War I. We went to the monument and our teacher said: ‘Children, sing our anthem in your head one last time.’ We started singing aloud, and the people who went by joined us. It was a complete manifestation. No one informed on us. If there’s no informant, there’s no judge.”

  • “On the way there were three boys with us from the Sudetes. They had refused to join the German army. [The wagons] were divided into small compartments, we were four there. And they added one more man there. From Ostrava. They had one last cigarette, they were smoking it together, and they didn’t give him a single puff. The window was blacked out so we couldn’t see outside, and there was a ventilator above it. One of the boys climbed up and looked out through the ventilator. The Ostravan called the German guard that the boys wanted to escape, that they were unscrewing it there. So they were beat up and then dragged around in cuffs. We came to Salzburg, and they put us into one small room, where there were forty of us together. In the middle of the night we heard - wham, wham, wham, moans and a cry for help. And dull blows. The boys beat the informer to death.”

  • “Then there were thirteen of us in one cell. The leader was a doctor from Kojetín. There were so many fleas there that the blankets moved. The doctor said we didn’t have anything else to do, so we’d catch fleas. Believe it or not, the first day we caught 450 fleas. Then there weren’t any fleas there any more. We always told the oberwachtmeister that we needed a bucket of water. Two to three times a week we washed the floor and wiped the bed frames. There were no fleas there. People brought me extra helpings. Say, the neighbours peeled their potatoes and threw the peels out, but we ate them. One of the prisoners had all his teeth pulled out, so he gave me his crusts. He’d call at me: ‘Hey you whose dad’s got his head in basket, come here.’ I wanted to throw it in his face, but the doctor told me to take every scrap of food I could get. I only weighed forty kilos.”

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    Tovačov, 11.02.2015

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People today lack patriotic feeling

Bohumil Venclík
Bohumil Venclík
photo: archiv pamětníka

Bohumil Venclík was born on 13 January 1924 in Tovačov into a traditional pot-maker’s family. His father was chief of the local Sokol organisation for twenty-five years and also a member of the board of the district Sokol organisation for Central Moravia - Kratochvílov. His father joined the resistance in March 1939. He took command of Section 5 of the resistance group Defence of the Nation. His son Bohumil helped him distribute leaflets and also functioned as a messenger. During the war the family gave refuge to the wanted resistance fighter Rajmund Navrátil. But Navrátil was caught, and under gruesome interrogation he divulged the names of his benefactors. On 3 December 1943 the Gestapo arrested Bohumil’s father, mother, and Bohumil himself. Bohumil Venclík Sr was sentenced to death and executed at the prison in Prague-Pankrác on 26 May 1944. His mother was given five years in prison and Bohumil was sentenced to eighteen months. His mother was then taken to the prison in Jauer (Jawor) in Silesia. Towards the end of the war she underwent a death march to Dresden. Of the three thousand prisoners herded by the guards retreating from the oncoming front, only five hundred were said to have arrived to their destination. She returned home in June 1945. Bohumil Venclík was taken to the prison in Bernau, Bavaria. After five months he was released for health reasons, and he remained in recovery until the end of the war. After the war the witness renewed the family pottery, but in 1951 the Communist regime banned him from continuing the business. After that, Bohumil Venclík Jr worked at a gravel plant in Tovačov until his retirement, and he still lives in the same small town as his ancestors did.