Bedřich Hanauer

* 1943

  • "Unfortunately, what happened was that parents were homesick and they wanted to go back. Wanted to go back. So, in that court verdict, when dad was sentenced, in that sentence, they banished him from the Humpolec district forever, like that, and deprived of all civil rights. That's how it is written in the verdict. So he, in fact, when he went there, he could go to Květinov but not to Radňov, that was that Humpolec District. Then, someone sent him a letter that somewhere… around Pelhřimov, he could get a job there, and a flat, and he thought that he would go and have a look. He came here [to Vysočina], he stayed at uncle's in Květinov and in the evening, he went to catch a bus to go to Svitálka and someone saw him that he was getting on a bus that went to Humpolec and thought that he was going to that grandma there. So they snitched on him. Before the first morning bus, at half past four, there, there were the police around the house so they woke him up, arrested him, he was in a custody in Jihlava for a week and there was another court hearing and he got a month in jail.”

  • "In 1950, [dad] bought a new threshing machine. We had it for a year and then the comrades from the village council sent a letter (it is documented here, too) that he station the thresher machine to the main square. It was in 1951. He bought it in 1950. He also bought a hay press, all accessories, so that he would have a complete set, and then he had to, everything, cables, motor, station it on the square. At the beginning of August. And there's written 'after the smallholders thresh theirs, you will thresh yours later'. But they wanted to have the quota met.”

  • “It did not take long before dad arrived because the amnesty applied to him, so they released him. So he actually spent just over two months in prison. Just very little over two months. So we were there [in the Frýdlant Salient] about a week, maybe slightly less than two weeks, and dad came. But mom wrote to him. She sent him cloths when she got to know that the amnesty applies to him. But he did not get those so he borrowed some money from a civilian who worked in the uranium mine, bought some work clothes and went home in those. But he did not go to Radňov to see us, he went here [to Havlíčkův Brod] because he did not know, not at all, that we had been forcibly removed. Here in Brod, he met an acquaintance but he didn't tell him, nobody told him. Everyone was afraid, nobody had guts enough to tell him that we were forcibly removed. So he went to Radňov. In lower Radňov, he had an uncle, so he told him, this Šimek, he had often come to visit us, and he told him that we were forcibly removed.”

  • „A seven-hundred six arrived, it was that big lorry with that front and Erena [another type of truck] and they loaded our things and got us on the truck and when we went, they stopped in Květinov because the police assisted and they insisted that grandmother go with us and they went to uncle's. I do not remember exactly whether grandma was there or whether she was somewhere in hiding but they did not pick her. I don't remember this clearly. We travelled to the Frýdlant Salient. We arrived in the middle of the night and when they were taking a turn, they split our cupboard. They ran into a neighbour's tree branch how they drove us to that house. They split one cupboard, a carpenter needed to fix it afterwards. When we got off the truck, there was already… at that time, they used to glue such labels on notebooks, so there was Reservé Hanauer written on it, we had the house already reseved for us.”

  • „When there was the main search, as I said… so, they counted us and we had to sit in the kitchen. Nobody was allowed to go outside, nobody could just disappear. But when my grandfather married my grandmother, it was his second marriage, she brought Ruda with him. His surname was Šimek. Grandma's maiden name was Šimková. And he was a bit mentally retarded and he did what he wanted. He slept as long as he wanted. He had a separate room there, aside. Nobody told them, those secret policemen, so he was just sleeping there. So they woke him up and told jim to go and sit with us. And this uncle, he was tiny… and we had a small window in the kitchen that opened to the neigbours' vegetable garden, and there was a sort of larger grille there. So this uncle, he simply crawled there and went to drag away… there were those tall stone pots full of lard. When they started with searches at the Horňa mill, when they slaughtered a pig or something. So those [pots] were there, hidden, and uncle picked the keys and crawled through the window and dragged the pots to the woods. He covered them with twigs so they survived without damage.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Havlíčkův Brod, 22.01.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 56:23
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Havlíčkův Brod, 17.01.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:43:52
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Dad did not know that we had been forcibly removed and he looked for us at home

Bedřich Hanauer Jr., born in1943
Bedřich Hanauer Jr., born in1943
photo: Soukromý archiv Bedřicha Hanauera ml.

Bedřich Hanauer was born on the 5th of November of 1943 in Humpolec. He and his siblings grew up on a family estate in Radňov. From the beginning, the family was under the pressure of the local Communists who strived to establish an Unified Agricultural Cooperative (JZD). His father, Bedřich Hanauer senior, was tried in a show trial for fraudulent transactions in pork, for not having met the assigned milk quota, and as the result, he was sentenced to fourteen months in prison. The family was banished to the village of Andělka in the Frýdlant Salient. In the amnesty in 1953, witness’ father was released from prison. He did not know about the forcible removal of his family so at first, he returned to the abandoned estate in Radňov, only then his uncle told him where his family was and only then he could go and join them. The witness’ parents worked at the State Farm in Andělka but they were homesick and wanted to visit their home. In 1958, Bedřich Hanauer Sr. was imprisoned for one month for violating a prohibition of residence in the Humpolec District. After fourteen years in the Frýdlant Salient, the Hanauer family returned back to Vysočina and acquired a house in Lípa, which is located only a few kilometres off Radňov. Bedřich Hanauer Jr. trained as a saddlemaker and later on, as a locksmith. After 1989, the estate in Radňov returned to their hands. At the time of recording, Bedřich Hanauer lived in Havlíčkův Brod.