Miroslav Flanderka

* 1930  †︎ 2021

Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
/
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0%
Progress: 0%
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time -0:00
 
1x
  • "My father joined a cooperative, Jednota, but he didn't stay there long because Jednota then handed it over to Pramen as a state enterprise. Then it was the state, the house stayed with us for a few more years, and then one day a letter came saying that since there was an establishment of the state-owned store at number 336, the house was transferred to the state and so much rent was being assessed. Suddenly the house, which had belonged to the Flanders family since the beginning of the century, became a state store. The maintenance was all shoddy, and then when it was returned to us after the fall of the Communists, it was a wreck."

  • "The war seemed incredibly long to us. The six years it lasted were perhaps the longest of my life. And I was slowly turning from a kid into a jingo, as they say. As it got closer, the lines, and you could hear the sound effects already, people, even school children, including us, were coming and digging trenches as a defensive rampart against the advancing armies, that is, against the Russian army that was coming from the east. And there were columns and columns of all kinds of civilians fleeing from the front, as well as troops withdrawing westwards, because they knew that any capture by the Russians would be far worse than capture on the western front. They also had something to worry about, as the Germans made short work of Russian prisoners until they were victorious. Whereas the Western ones, the treatment of them was very different after all."

  • "Then I managed to pass the exams for the grammar school, but the Germans had already announced an order that the number of pupils was limited. There was only one class and they allowed thirty boys, ten girls, they didn't accept more that year. So we continued only in that one class and the situation got worse and worse. The signs with the executed people, the red ones, especially after the assassination of Heydrich, they kept appearing. People were scared, they had to pay attention to what was going on. And Hitler thrived. He started the war that year against Poland, then went on to dominate practically all of Europe. In his maximum expansionism he got as far as Moscow, he got as far as the Black Sea, all of Europe including the Balkan Peninsula, Denmark to the north, Norway, France to the west. He took it all, and had tremendous success. People didn't know how it was going to end. But they knew that if it ended with Hitler winning, it would not be good for us."

  • "When I was born, it was actually the most peaceful time of my life, although I didn't realize it as a child. But you have to remember, the president at that time was the founder of the state, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, still in office. And it was calm. Hitler was not in power and life was quite decent, orderly. That first republic was probably the nicest thing that was around me in my whole life. After that... I don't think it was ever as nice in our country as it was then."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Podsemín, 20.03.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 50:39
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

The war seemed incredibly long

Family house and shop in the time of restitution
Family house and shop in the time of restitution
photo: Archive of Miroslav Flanderka

Miroslav Flanderka was born on 9 February 1930 in Turnov. He spent most of his school years in the distressing times of the Protectorate. After graduating from grammar school, he studied at the Czech Technical University (CTU) and worked as a designer. After February 1948, the communists took his family’s shop and house as part of nationalization, and after the Velvet Revolution the family got it back as a ruin. Miroslav Flanderka died on 24 February 2021.