Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

Interview with Mr. Zdeněk Kovařík
At the beginning of our interview I would like to ask you about your childhood.
I was born in 1931 in Hradec Králové 1 where I practically lived the majority of my life. We
were four siblings and I was the oldest one and my youngest brother was eight years younger.
I can say that as for my childhood I had really wonderful parents and a great childhood. There
were four of us and we all had some duties and my parents didn’t really have it that easy. My
father was a laborer who worked as a driver of city buses in Hradec Králové. He had to work
hard to feed four children. Fortunately, I had a good advantage because I was quite independent
and I didn’t act out against my parents. I was also, well I don’t want to praise myself, but
I was quite hard working so I always had time for my hobby and fun.
Can you remember the 1938 mobilization or the beginning of the war?
After the Germans came I could already remember such moments as the one when my
father got home from two mobilizations, one in June and one in September 1938 2 . He came
and he was angry and sorry at the same time, not knowing whether he should cry or take
a shotgun and return to the borders and start shooting someone there. That was something
like the first introduction to finding out that you are helpless. I started to understand that
a person should never give up easily and a person always has something to fight for. Already
at that time, in 1939 I wanted to join Scouts 3 . After the Germans came scouting was unfortunately
prohibited so it only remained a wish and as a friendship with those who used to
go to Scouts. We were really lucky that we were such a nice group of boys. During the war
the Gestapo locked up one whole family in a house in Hradec. Since they were doing that at
night, we only found out what they did with the people later on. Then it was something as
an inner resistance of things happening around us. Next to us there lived Karel Kodeš who
was a couple years older than me, at that time he was probably eighteen. He immigrated
then and after the war was over I found out he fell in as a member of a flying squadron and
that he was shot down over the Bay of Biscay. These are the kind of memories that have
always tidied me through hard times and when I think of them they would motivate me to
do something.
1 Hradec Králové – a town in the Northeast of Bohemia.
2 In May 1938 the military information service got information about the massive concentration of the German army by
the Czechoslovakian borders in Saxony and Silesia. This information was interpreted as direct preparations for an attack
on Czechoslovakia. For this reason it was decided to mobilize one unit of defense and five units of technical internal defense.
It was not a mobilization in the true meaning of the word because the reserve forces were not activated and the
defense only strengthened the formations. This act of “guarding the boarders” in 1938 was called a “small mobilization.”
In September 23, 1938 a real mobilization was announced and on this day Czechoslovakia started a general service. After
the Munich Agreement was signed, all forces were dissolved.
3 Scouts is an international movement whose aim is education and self-education of children. During Czech history, Scouts
was prohibited three times by a regime (by the Nazis and Communists) because it always stood up actively against totalitarianism.
Many scout representatives died during the rebellious activity, were executed, or imprisoned in Nazi concentration
camps. Many of them were victims in political processes in the 50’s. Scouting always did its best with political freedom
(in 1945, 1968, and 1989) and immediately renewed its activity.
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