Mgr. Bohuslav Ebermann

* 1948

  • „Well, in 1987 I actually went to Czechoslovakia to see my parents. My ex-wife was in Grenoble with the children because they were going to school. Well, I was here in Pilsen - and we called each other and I said: 'Hey, just arrange it at school that we have to come back on the 31st, 30th of April, because we have a clause until the 30th of April.' She told me: 'Well, think about it, because I have already decided that I will stay here in France, that I will not return to the Czech lands, and if you want to see the children, then come back here too.' So I came back. In the meantime, I was still able to give my mother a colour TV and stuff and a few things from the apartment I was in. Some of the radios I had there that could be transported somehow without anyone seeing and spying on me. Well, it turned out that the apartment was taken away. It became the city’s flat. I'm sure some communist got it. My mom then went through various interrogations and was asked where the refrigerator was, where the color TV was - and that she had to return it immediately. And my mother sent them to hell, she said: 'Try it, you won't cross my line.' They didn't try.“

  • „My grandfather was a tradesman, my mother the daughter of a tradesman, so logically I had a harder life. When I then took the exams for the vocational school - and I studied quite well, I think I was more convinced that I passed the exams. Because my classmate from Vochov also copied a lot of things from me - and he passed the exams. And considering that his father was on the party's regional committee, it was nothing strange. At that time, I played hockey quite well and already at the age of sixteen they wanted me in the 'A' team. At that time it was called Spartak Plzeň. Well, that required parental consent. So the whole committee of Škoda came to Vochov and they asked my mother to sign so I could be “aged” (a term for a health assessment to play in a higher sports category). Because otherwise I wouldn't be able to play. She signed it under the condition that they would arrange for me to get into the vocational school. So the department arranged it, and I got in. Although I was - I would say - on the black list, or the red list, when my mother asked Mr. Forman why I didn't pass the exams, and the colleague who copied from me did, he said he looked into my papers and that I was condemned to manual labour.“

  • „I enlisted on the 1st of July 1968, and the Russians came on the 21st of August, right, so the military had a quite interesting start. We were at the training camp in Hodonín, in Dukla Hodonín, because the basic players of Dukla Jihlava went on a trip abroad - on a tour of Italy, Switzerland and West Germany. Us newcomers who came to Jihlava, we weren’t in formation yet and so we went to training in Dukla Hodonín. Well, now you're lying in the barracks, you're lying on the bunk, and all of a sudden the boys were playing the radio and with it came the news about the Russian invasion of the republic. We somehow didn't believe it, we were still joking, well, and then they said, come and see how the tanks drive around here on the main street in Hodonín. So we stood there in uniform, we didn't have any weapons, they took them all from us, so we couldn't do anything, it wasn't possible to defend the republic, it wasn't possible with our bare hands. Well, in the newspaper they ended up saying that Dukla Jihlava received offers from West Germany to play in their competition, from Italy - that they would play a competition, Switzerland, that they would play in the Swiss league. So we were kind of scared as to what was going to happen next. But luckily, Dukla returned, because probably for one simple reason, that they were all soldiers, and they were also long-serving soldiers, and if they had stayed in the West, it would have been desertion - and that is a grievous sin.“

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    Plzeň, 01.07.2019

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    duration: 52:33
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
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Take life as it is

Bohuslav Ebermann
Bohuslav Ebermann
photo: Post Bellum

Bohuslav Ebermann was born on September 19, 1948 in Vochov in the Pilsen region to a family of tradesmen. Despite a bad cadre assessment (a form of personal assessment during the totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia), he graduated from the Secondary School of Electrical Engineering in Pilsen and finally from the Faculty of Education at Charles University in Prague. From 1965 he played hockey for the Pilsen team. He served his military service in the Dukla Jihlava team. From 1968 he played in for the Czechoslovak national team, in 1977 he won the title of world champion. In the years 1981–1989, he worked in French-speaking countries as a first league player. He emigrated in 1987 and the same year he obtained French citizenship. During the 1990s, he worked as a coach for Czech and foreign hockey clubs. Between 2002 and 2008, he was the director of a screen printing company in Pilsen. In 2010, he entered regional politics as the mayor of the village of Vochov. Since 2016, he has been working in the regional council of the Pilsen region as the chairman of the public procurement committee.