Josef Jehlička

* 1945

  • "When we were going there, we were happy, we were looking forward to seeing my grandfather again after six months and [then] we always cried for days as he had told us how he was without us, how he wanted to be with us. They were gluing envelopes there, both in Mírov and in Leopoldov. He said they were getting food that was just enough to live on. And indeed, when he came back and we went to get him after the amnesty in Leopoldov, my parents, my dad had a Moskvich car, so we were going there and right before we arrived in Bojkovice, my grandmothers had cooked duck for my grandfather because he had been shooting them and he had always liked them, the wild ducks, so they cooked them. But a friend of theirs from before the war, a doctor, came there and said that he saw grandfather and that he must not eat anything like that at all, because it would hurt him terribly. So he ordered some gelatine or something made of bones, so that his body, I remember him saying: to make his body communicate, so that he could eat normally. He was skinny, weak, really like when we see in the concentration camp films these people who were leaving camps and they weighed 45 or so kilos."

  • "They came to arrest my grandfather, I was crying a lot, I didn't want to let him go, I was holding his leg and my grandmother kept pulling me away from him so that something wouldn't happen to me. And I know that this Mr. Grebeníček, as it was in the kitchen, he shot at the chandelier and then, to calm me down or something, so that I wouldn't scream that I didn't want to let my grandfather go, he took a pan that was there on the sink and hit me on the head with it. I know that it is also recorded in the hospital in Uherské Hradiště that after that my grandmother took me there every fortnight. One time it was nitrate treatment of the head because my hair had stopped growing on half of my head. Once it was nitrate and the other time in 14 days I was getting injections in that bare skin again. I liked the nitrate treatment, I enjoyed that, but I used to be scared always a couple of days before we were to go for the injections because it hurt a lot."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Vsetín, 08.03.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 01:47:43
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
  • 2

    Vizovice, 02.09.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 40:07
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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They stormed in our home with guns in their hands

Josef Jehlička, recording 2022
Josef Jehlička, recording 2022
photo: Post Bellum recording

Josef Jehlička, born on 25 November 1945 in Zlín, experienced the arrest of his grandfather Josef Bruštík on 24 February 1950 as a young child. His father, Josef Jehlička, was arrested on the same day. In the Bruštík and associates trial, Anna Honová, then Krmenčíková, who worked as a correspondent in Bruštík’s former company Sběr in Uherský Brod (after the nationalization of the company, J. Bruštík acted as its director), was subsequently tried. During the two years of detention, which the all the accused spent partly in Uherské Hradiště and partly in Brno, several trials took place (J. Bruštík was also tried as part of the illegal group Včela). Charges of embezzlement, treason and illegal activities were brought. After the verdict, his father was released in February 1952, as he had served his sentence while being in custody. Josef Bruštík served his sentence in Mírov and Leopoldov. Thanks to an amnesty, he was released after 12 years (in total he was sentenced to 24 years). In the extensive investigation file V-2894 of the Security Services Archives of the Czech Republic, original prisoners´ secret notes and transcripts of the reports made by the agents who shared cells with the accused in Uherské Hradiště have been preserved. A description of an unrealized plan of a staged attempt of Josef Bruštík to escape across the border of Czechoslovakia (with the same features of the provocation method of the Action Stone and explicitly named as such in the file) has also been preserved. The trial of the witness´s grandfather and father had a devastationg impact on the status of all family members. For many years, the witness´s mother and grandmother had no chance to find employment, the witness father worked as a driver and delivered milk, and his grandfather Bruštík became a boiler operator. Although Josef Jehlička Jr. graduated from the grammar school in Uherský Brod, he was not admitted to the agricultural university for family background reasons. After the military service, which he completed at the airport in Brno-Slatina, he found a job as a bus driver. He continued to work in the car transport business after 1989 and later re-established the family company Sběr, which continues to operate on the market under the name Raciola. In 2023, he was living in Mirošov near Valašské Klobouky.