"A Russian, a Russian officer, came in and said that he had a car, a Mercedes, those were the first Mercedes cars, and that it didn't run. If my dad wouldn't fix it for him. And I always used to hang about. And he [my dad] found out there was no petrol in it. So he said he'd fix it for him, and I know that before we gave the Mercedes back to the Russian, we took it for a drive here to Stojice. We turned around there, down there, we turned around there and we drove that car back and gave it to him and told him it was fine."
"My school report was not with distinction, but it was enough for a secondary engineering school, no problem. So the school was rejected [to me], and even though I applied, they didn't get back to me at all, nothing, nothing. So what to do? They said, "Bricklayer, miner... and the third was Transporta [Chrudim].'"
"That was where the guns were put away, where the guns were turned in. So the guns that the Germans had to throw away, it was all in the Pheasantry. That's where we used to go to collect the cartridges, we used to empty the powder out of the cartridge, we always broke off the tip, poured the powder out and we always set it on fire and it burned beautifully. It made a 'ssst' sound, it burned beautifully. Or we'd leave the cartridges whole and put them under the train. Under the locomotives that were going to Prachovice, it was a fair bang when the locomotive hit it."
"The funfair used to be always in the square. An air raid happened, it was the biggest air raid on Pardubice. The power was always turned off, everything was off. So all the attractions and everything that was electrical stopped. I know I was on the Ferris wheel with the boys. We were left standing, so then we climbed down. That was Sunday the twenty-fourth of August, the town fun fair, and that was the biggest air raid. That's when we were running from the city to the meadows. Most of the people were running to the meadows."
Bohuslav Jirásek was born on 2 June 1937 in Prague. Two years later the family moved to Heřmanův Městec. Bohuslav’s father set up his own workshop and bicycle shop there. In August 1944 Bohuslav witnessed the air raid on Pardubice. Shortly after the communist coup in June 1948, he took part in the XIth Sokol Meeting. At the turn of the 1940s and 1950s Bohuslav experienced a house search by State Security. Because of his father’s trade and his membership in the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party, Bohuslav was not allowed to study at secondary school. In 1956, he trained as an electrician and started his military service. He spent most of the training in Terezín. After finishing the service, he started working in the electrical section of Czechoslovak Railways. In 1962 he became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). The reason was the possibility of his further education at a secondary technical school and a more certain future for his children. During the Prague Spring he signed the declaration Two Thousand Words. In 1970, he was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia because of his opposition to the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. He lived through normalisation without much difficulty. During the Velvet Revolution he took part in demonstrations in Prague. Bohuslav Jirásek died on 5 August 2022.
