Dalibor Kloc

* 1929

  • "I was the first one when it was shot down over Přerov. Because I lived right in Rokytnice and right at those fields. I know that it was fighting in the air at that time. It was cloudy. I saw it all from the aerial workshops. So I ran out towards Olomouc at the time when a four-engine bomber crashed there. I was close by, and I crawled through that plane to steal the instructions on what to do when something happened. I wanted to take it, but I didn't have anywhere to put it, so I just took some parts that are still in the house where I was born."

  • "[At that time, they were building Messerschmitt 110s], fighters. They were manufactured in Lutín and delivered to the airport where they were assembled and tested. Then they were flown to Vienna New Town for the army needs. I know that at that time there was a Gestapo that caught sabotage, that they were assembling landing gear that didn't work. I know that at that time the Gestapo picked up everybody who was working around it."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Velké Losiny, 19.02.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 01:55:22
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Velké Losiny, 26.02.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 27:58
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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It was cloudy and there was a fight in the air

Dalibor Kloc in his childhood
Dalibor Kloc in his childhood
photo: Witness´s archive

Dalibor Kloc was born on 5 July 1929 in Předmostí near Přerov. In this village, he attended the Scouts group in his childhood, with which he experienced three Scouts camps before the entire Scout organization was dissolved by the Nazi regime in 1940. Two years later, he had to leave the town school early and, on the order of the authorities, to start an apprenticeship as an aircraft mechanic. The training took place in the aviation workshops at the Olomouc Neředín airport, then used as a Luftwaffe airfield. In December 1944, he was an eyewitness to the crash of an American bomber in Rokytnice near Přerov. At the end of the war his father Jaroslav joined the uprising in Přerov. In 1945, Dalibor Kloc finished his apprenticeship and it was then that the family moved to the border town of Velké Losiny, where his father took the post of postmaster. Dalibor Kloc became the head of the Junák club in Velké Losiny. But after February 1948, the communist regime abolished the Junák organisation again. Sometime around that time, they forced his father into early retirement because he, as a former member of the Czech National Social Party, he had become inconvenient for the new regime. Between 1952 and 1954 Dalibor Kloc underwent military service. He served again as an aircraft mechanic at the Olomouc Neředín airport. There he went through the military vocational school for aviation mechanics and as a member of the training squadron he supported the first steps of future pilots in basic training. After completeing his military service he worked at the Velamos Sobotín branch and then at the Severomoravské pily branch until his retirement. After his first unsuccessful marriage, he married Marie Foltýnová in 1955 and between 1957 and 1966 their three children - Dalibor, Jana and Šárka - were born. Despite repeated offers, he never joined the Communist Party. At the time of recording in 2024, he was still living in Velké Losiny.