Vladimír Zajíc

* 1939

  • "When we were in San Marino, I saw a newsstand where they had these magazines on display, and I looked at them. There was half a photograph half a drawing of Wenceslas Square. ‘That’s Wenceslas square. Why do they have it here?' And there were Russian tanks driving around, that looked like painted. And so I told my wife, 'Look, how our communists say, in Western propaganda everything is made up. Our country is totally calm and here they paint Russian tanks on Wenceslas square.’ We arrived on August 19. On the 20th we had a rest and went to see my mother-in-law in Šumava. She was there on holiday with the ROH (The revolutionary trade union movement). We slept on the floor and suddenly my mother-in-law woke us up in the middle of the night: 'The Russians are here!' And I said, 'Where are they?' I didn't understand it at all."

  • "Suddenly we heard a loud bang. Across the tracks from Borská Street, I saw that the fourth gate by the Central Garages fell down. Dust stirred up, and a cloud of dust appeared. The people started screaming and the crowd rushed out of the factory towards the Central Garages and in all directions. I saw them rushing down Hálek Street across the tracks. And as soon as the gate fell, we heard machine-gun shots. I heard it with my own ears. There was a young man standing next to me, I guess he was around twenty-five. He grabbed me by the hand, took me into the first house in Borská Street and dragged me towards the backyard. We stopped by some niche. We stood there and listened. There was no more shooting. And he told me: 'Stay here until it's over - then you can go.' He ran towards the entrance and disappeared. I ran to the entrance seconds later and I saw the crowd rushing and the Škoda Factory emptying out."

  • "Suddenly Mrs. Ornstová says: 'Vláďa, come here quickly. The Americans are coming! It was interesting how huge the army was. A lot of tanks and other vehicles. We could hear loud noise in the distance, but it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. It was coming from everywhere. So Mrs. Ornstová and I went to Kotousov. And there we saw convoys headed to Pilsen. They were coming from Letiny. Kotousov is a village on the road from Pilsen to Nepomuky. They were coming from Letiny, from a side road. There they turned and rushed for Pilsen - through Zdemyslice and Chválenice. It was a great experience. Car after car was coming. Then there were some strange tanks that surprised me, because they didn't have belts, but rubber wheels. The top was exactly like a tank. The turret, the gun barrel, but it had rubber wheels, so it didn't make that screeching noise that I was used to when the German tanks drove around Klatovy Avenue. Then there were trucks carrying infantrymen. They were sitting in the back, their rifles under a tarp on their laps with the barrels up. Sometimes they had artillery guns attached. There was no jeep going solo. They all had two-wheeled trailers carrying ammunition chests. And most of them had captured Germans sitting on them in their uniforms, they looked so dejected. They were to take them to a detention camp in Pilsen where they would take them in and take care of them."

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    Plzeň, 01.03.2022

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If all we lost was money, we’d have a wonderful life

Vladimír Zajíc in May 1945
Vladimír Zajíc in May 1945
photo: Contemporary witness's archive

Vladimír Zajíc was born on December 17, 1939 in Pilsen, during the first months of the Second World War. What he remembers most from his childhood are the bomber raids on the industrial part of the city. For safety reasons his parents decided to send him to their relatives in the countryside. There he later welcomed the American army. He started primary school after returning to his hometown. In June 1953, he witnessed the Pilsen uprising, which was a reaction to the new currency reform. Later he graduated from a secondary technical school of mechanical engineering and in 1963 he successfully passed the state final exams at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Pilsen. He also had to undergo compulsory military service, which, thanks to his expertise, he completed joining the secret nuclear missile operating unit near Hranice na Moravě. His military service, however, led to him not only being banned from traveling to the West for the next four years, but also having to give a statement in which he rejected communism, which he didn’t keep secret later on. During the upcoming normalization this attitude could have been fatal, as he was threatened to be fired from the education system, which he didn’t want to give up. However, thanks to a combination of coincidences and good luck, he managed to hold onto his position and was eventually even promoted to deputy headmaster, even though he refused to join the Communist Party. He remained in the education sector until his retirement, which he continues to enjoy in 2022 in Pilsen.