I’d still be in the People’s Militia if it hadn’t ended
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Jiří Baumruk was born on 10 January 1950. The family was affected by the Second World War. His uncle Bohuslav Baumruk died while serving in the 311th Czechoslovak Bomber Squadron of the Royal Air Force. His father Jaroslav Baumruk was imprisoned with other family members in the internment camp in Svatobořice near Brno and after the war he supervised the operation of the assembly camp in Skláry, intended for the German-speaking population awaiting deportation to Germany. Jiří Baumruk trained as a plumber and after finishing school he entered compulsory military service. He started out in the army with the engineers and was subsequently transferred to the military buildings administration, where he was imprisoned for ten days for drinking alcohol and watching football match. After the completion of his military service, he became one of the few people in Czechoslovakia to work with copper pipes. He married and joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1974. He was a member of the People’s Militia and in November 1989 he was transferred to Prague, where he awaited deployment. In 1991 he lost his job, in his opinion because of his pre-November activities. He worked in Germany for five years and then at the Housing Cooperative in Tachov, where he carried out inspections of flats. In 2021 he was living in his house in Tachov.
