Rudolf Daníček

* 1933

  • “Back then I was home alone with my brother, and suddenly there was an uproar outside, back then the Germans took it from Kamínky, they set up a machine gun and let rip in the direction of Semily. Back then we hid among the alders. Then our parents got back, and Dad – because he was a Sokol and also a fireman – so they fought back there so that the Germans wouldn’t take all the suits away.”

  • “They prepared and launched an assault on Lhoty. I remember that back then that they used those dum-dum shots, which actually did it for my friend Olda Koucký. He had a hole here and all splattered up at the back. Back then they carried him on a wheelbarrow all the way to Zittwerke, and he stayed there until everything over and done with, when he and his cousin were given a normal burial together in the graveyard in Chuchelna.”

  • “Due to some sabotage efforts Granddad was tried, convicted, and put in prison in Tanvald, and we brought him those packages there to Plavy, where some one or other handed it over to him. He was punished for it, and he died there. He was tortured to death, as they say, the Germans didn’t mess around.”

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    Semily, 08.03.2018

    (audio)
    duration: 01:10:02
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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The revolt in Chuchelna was meaningful

Rudolf Daníček
Rudolf Daníček
photo: Archiv - Pamět národa

Rudolf Daníček was born in 1933 in Chuchelna near Semily. The local textile plant was occupied by the German army during the war, and leather military coats were made there. On 3 May 1945 the army wanted to retreat from the village and take the stock of coats with it. The local inhabitants revolted, lead by members of Sokol. They managed to disarm the German garrison in Chuchelna and at the watch tower on Kozákov. The Germans then launched a counter-attack on the village, which the witness and his family survived. Rudolf Daníček attended a vocational school and then completed an evening course at a secondary technical school. He did various jobs but ended up as as an engineer. He now lives at the Semily Social Care Home.