František Brouk

* 1938

  • "The Germans were accomodated there when they were going to Russia, the soldiers slept there. They made beds for them, the hall was cleared out. Then it was cleared out, the theatre was normally performed, which I took an active part in because I lived in that house. I practically played all the children's parts. Then there were national guests who were running away from the Russians again. They slept there with their horses and their covers. I was older now, so we were already fooling around with the others, we didn´t understand it well. Allegedly, it happened, I don't have confirmation from anyone, when the Germans ambushed Burdych at Bohdašín, someone betrayed the paratrooper [Jiří Potůček], and he escaped. Supposedly, he was supposed to spend the night with us, because grandfather [my father] was connected to the Sokol resistance group during the war."

  • "They had problems when the revolution was in Prague in 1945. In the theatre, there was the Sokol sign on the front, which is still there today, and it had been boarded up, covered up, and it said Kino Viktoria. When the Germans lost and were running away, the technicians from the theater wanted to take it down. They took ladders and took down the boarding that covered the Sokol sign. But, as you saw in the photos, there was a barracks across the street, and they could be seen easily. So the Germans raided them. Grandmother [my mum] shouted that the Germans were coming, so the men fled. My dad ran downstairs, took the films, the film boxes, because he was a projectionist. The German was pointing the gun to the window at Mum, we lived on the ground floor, that Grandpa [Dad] had to go with them. She knew German well and told them that dad was making films, that he hadn't done anything. It all turned out well. They said I was running shouting that they were going to kill my mum."

  • "He took part in the mobilisation as a border guard, they occupied the bunkers above Vrchlabí. We went there when I was six months old. I know it from the stories, because I was too young to know. My mother went there with me and my sister, in September the war was threatening, so that grandfather [my dad] would have some memory of us, if by chance... By chance it turned out well, he came back and worked as a janitor."

  • Full recordings
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    Hradec Králové, 29.11.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 02:26:24
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - HRK REG ED
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

He was shielding his dad who was taking pictures of German soldiers from under his coat

František Brouk as a guide for the travel agency Čedok in the 1980s
František Brouk as a guide for the travel agency Čedok in the 1980s
photo: Witness´s archive

František Brouk was born on 22 March 1938 in Jaroměř. He lived with his parents, sister and brother in the building of the Jaroměř Sokol Hall, where his father worked as a janitor. Little František saw German soldiers going to the eastern front sleeping in the theatre hall, and in 1945 he met the “national guests” fleeing from the east back to Germany. His father was active in the Sokol resistance group and during the war he secretly photographed events in Jaroměř. After the war, he trained as an electrician in Semily and later worked as a radio operator in a telecommunications company. He was a member of Sokol and the Vrchlický theatre association, and for a time he ran Bouček’s puppet theatre in Jaroměř. In the spring of 1969, he celebrated the victory of the Czechoslovak hockey team over the Soviet team on the square in Jaroměř. From 1972 he was a tour guide for Čedok. After the Velvet Revolution he received a bronze medal from the Czech Sokol Association. In 2023 he was living in Jaroměř.