Zdeněk Hruška

* 1922

Boy Scouts
29. 9. 1938 - The Munich Diktat, 1945 - 1948 - First renewal of Junák
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    Trained for defense and mobilization in 1938

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    duration: 02:34
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    “We were young guys when we tried to build a new republic. We felt obliged to defend it because it was threatened. Brother Němeček introduced military training to our Scout troop – we went to shoot at the shooting range, we had courses in first aid, map-reading courses, etc. Thus, the agenda of our Scout meetings at that time was very rich and diverse. The ability to defend your country was among the most important attributes of scout training – it was a part of our lives. In May 1938, we were called to pre-mobilization. We were woken up at night - we were fifteen-year-old boys – we got the papers and were calling together the tanks. At the time of the mobilization in September 1938, we occupied all police stations because the municipal police were drafted, so we took over their duties and controlled the traffic in Hradec.”

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    His troop mirroring the social composition of Czechoslovak society

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    duration: 01:04
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    "It was interesting that our troop mirrored the typical social structure of the society of the time. There were boys from families of officers, businessmen, civil servants, railway workers or from really poor families. For instance Knop, who studied at the technical college, had to support himself by giving lectures. He had no money. When he went to a camp, we all contributed so he could go. Or Oušek - his father died in a concentration camp, he was left without his mother and lived with his grandmother. These were all different stories.”

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    Hradec Králové, 01.05.1998

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    duration: 39:18
    media recorded in project A Century of Boy Scouts
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Those friendships still exist forty years later

Zdeněk Hruška
Zdeněk Hruška

Zdeněk Hruška was born in 1922 in Chrudim. At the age of thirteen, he joined the 5th Scout troop in Hradec Králové and he remained an active member until the early 1940s when their Scout camp was broken up by the Nazis. In 1945, he contributed to the recovery of the Scout organization in Hradec. In the postwar years, he and Milota Fanderlík organized the forest school of the Jirásek area and he was an active leader of the troop. After the war, he studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University in Prague. Later, he worked at the Hradec branch of the Škoda auto company and in 1949 he left to work in Iran, where he returned several times. After the rehabilitation of the Scout in 1989, he was active in the organization of the Old Scouts.

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Na prahu 15. tábora (nejen) hradeckých oldskautů v Pařezské Lhotě

  • date:
    01.06.2010
  • medium type:
    Newspapers and magazines
  • medium name:
    Kmenové noviny

Z oldskautského tábora

  • date:
    01.12.2003
  • medium type:
    Newspapers and magazines
  • medium name:
    Kmenové noviny
  • author:
    Jana Skácelová