“The guards had a deviation. We were twenty-five in the quarters and they used to check on us, who had whatever there. We had just one thing, a margarine box and a newspaper there. I once had a Catholic magazine there. The guardians found it. I was wondering why they should mind... But they did. I got one night in correction room, which was prison inside prison. I also experienced escapes in Jáchymov. Some boys rode to another workplace, so they had an agreement, assaulted the guard during the transport, picked up his gun, jumped out of the car and ran away, into the unknown. They shot them all without pardon and brought them to the camp. The dead lay there and we had to march around. The guardians only repeated that this would happen to anyone who attempted to escape.”
“As the front approached, many were already fleeing [from forced labor in Kurim]. I decided to run away as well. It was 14 April, 1945. Together with others I went to the railway station in Brno. We had uniforms, so we looked like soldiers. There were so many soldiers at the station that no one could get into the carriage. It was guarded by the German police. We had long green military coats, so nobody ignored us and we walked along with the soldiers. In Náměšť we had to get off to get to Velké Meziříčí. Of course, we had no documents on the run, the inspectors asked for money from us, but eventually they waved their hands. Before the war ended, I had to hide at home, because deserting was punished by death sentence.”
“When we were released in Jáchymov, they told us that we should return to the place where the police had picked us up, that what we was behind could not be reminded of us, and that we should behave well. Well, I believed it was over. So, I went to the faculty in Brno to ask to finish my second state exam. But they told me it wasn't possible that if I had interrupted my studies for three years, it was no longer the case that the only possibility was to study again and distantly. The clerk who was in charge of the distance students then asked me if I went to church. I said yes. And he told me that I couldn't be a teacher. I asked him when religious freedom doesn't apply? And he replied that it would be better if I found a job where it wasn't such an issue.”
Ladislav Homola was born on 26 January 1927 into a large family in Lavičky in Vysočina. During World War II he escaped from forced labor in a factory in Kuřim and had to hide in the last weeks of the war. During his university studies at the Teaching Institute in Brno he joined the student resistance group Skřel, which distributed leaflets with an anti-communist focus. He was arrested by the StB very soon in the classroom. The court in Brno then sentenced him in November 1949 to four years of imprisonment for appeals against the Republic. He served his sentence in uranium mines in Jáchymov, he stayed in the Mariánská camp. The totalitarian regime never allowed him to pursue teaching activities. Ladislav worked as a labourer throughout his life. He raised four sons. At the time of filming the interview (2019) he lived in Velké Meziříčí. Ladislav Homola passed away on September, the 21st, 2020
The witness's wedding in 1962 with his second wife. It was the witness's love of youth. He had to say goodbye to her once, because her parents were looking for a man who would take care of her family farm along with her. But when his first wife died after the birth of his third son, he returned to his love, and this time there was nothing to stop the marriage.
The witness's wedding in 1962 with his second wife. It was the witness's love of youth. He had to say goodbye to her once, because her parents were looking for a man who would take care of her family farm along with her. But when his first wife died after the birth of his third son, he returned to his love, and this time there was nothing to stop the marriage.
