Oldřich Čunek

* 1927

  • "They [the Koreans] were poor. Because doors were being painted there and you can't turn that around yourself, or it's hard, so I had workers assigned. And I wrote to my wife at home and she sent me such nice things for one of the workers who had a lot of children, scarves and little things like that. But he was afraid to take it, that was the regime there. Those people didn't have a good time, because there even lovers couldn't hold hands or sit next to each other on the bench. No, it was against the order. So there was a lot of strictness. And I could see, especially in the people who worked with me, how afraid they were of being bullied by the regime."

  • "Already planes were roaring and bombs were falling, some of them on Antonínova Street. A bomb fell in front of our house and there was a huge crater. And from the house next door on Antonínova Street, about 300-400 metres away, a lintel flew out of the window and broke through the wall in our living room and landed in the living room, which we were just painting. And our sister Helena stayed at home, and when the bombs were falling, she ran from our house across Antonínova Street to the meadow to the hill behind us, in the smoke and the smell of the bombs that were exploding, I was still sitting with my dad on the meadow. When we saw the horror of the bombs falling from the sky, we jumped up and rushed to that little hill, there was a kind of bunker there and we hid there."

  • "I saw President Masaryk when he was driving by on his way from Otrokovice in an open car and people were waving at him, I still remember that. And with President Beneš, I also remember his speech [in Zlín]. But most of all I remember Klement Gottwald. He was drunk and he was speaking from the platform under the Big Cinema to the nation, I wasn´t listening much. It seemed to me that he was not normally in his right mind. But he was talking to the Communists and to his friends. Klement Gottwald, I remember him well."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Zlín, 17.12.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 04:02:42
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
  • 2

    Zlín, 06.08.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 02:28:25
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

After I found faith, my life changed completely

Before military service, around 1949
Before military service, around 1949
photo: Witness´s archive

Oldřich Čunek was born on 29 September 1927 in Vsetín, but spent most of his life in Zlín, where his father Josef Čunek established a painting business during the First Republic. During World War II, his father was arrested by the Gestapo for his activities in the anti-Nazi resistance and imprisoned in Graz for six months. The life of the Čunek family was also significantly affected by the devastating Allied air raid on Zlín in November 1944, which damaged their house. After finishing town school, the witness trained as a painter, ready to take over his father’s workshop. However, plans were thwarted by the communist takeover in February 1948, which deprived the family of their business. Oldřich Čunek then worked together with his brother Josef at Pozemní stavby (Ground Construction). During the period of normalisation he went on business trips to North Korea, China and Egypt. In 1952 he married and four children were born from the marriage. Oldřich Čunek retired in 1987. He has been an active falconer all his life and is a deeply religious evangelical. In 2023 he was living in Zlín.