Oldřich Kolzrt

“I thus went to ask about a job at the post office, and they told me, well, we could hire you, but would not you like to work in the Benecko region? You are an athlete, and you would certainly not mind delivering mail there in winter. I refused, and I just asked them what my salary would be. They told me, oh, don’t worry about that, when you deliver the pension allowances, people will even give you something on top of that. I told them, you cannot be serious, you mean I should ask for money from those old grandpas and grannies? No way... Later I got a job in the bakery here, and I worked in the warehouse there. It just happened to be on 1st September, the first day of school, and the door of the warehouse opened towards the Bayer textile factory and I could see children walking to school and then back from school, and it was probably the worst moment from my life after I had had to quit. I simply could not act otherwise, and Oťa Morávek was in the same situation; they made him an offer that if he would oppose us, especially me, they would allow him to continue teaching at the school, but he refused it.”

“On the 3rd and 4th, people were taking down the German signs and then a German truck full of soldiers suddenly arrived there. We were on the town square and they were shooting in the air. Of course, we tried to run away into some back alley, and I was running with the others towards the glassmakers’ school. Fortunately there was one house where they opened the door for us and we squeezed inside. But then they left and there were no problems anymore. Only when they led the German captives through Brod into some assembly centre - I don’t know where they were sending them, but the processions of prisoners were passing through the town square and there they were scrutinized if there were any SS members among them, because they were the worst. The German army was better in their treatment of people, relatively speaking, compared to SS men, and those who had the SS symbol tattooed on them or displayed on their uniforms were put to prison in the town square in Brod. At the same time, prisoners from concentration camps were returning from the direction of Liberec, and one person from Brod was among them. What followed… I don’t know, because I ran away from there. Naturally, they wanted to take revenge on the SS men for what they had been through, and they would for instance grab a cobblestone and start beating the SS men.”

“When I left the Communist Party, I wrote that I wanted to preserve my right to have my own opinion, and that I would not allow myself to be restricted by anybody in the future; that was one thing. Then in 1968 I also signed the 2000 Words Manifesto, and I thus made my opinions public here. As for my membership in the Party, I do not want to make any excuses about it; that would be the same as to say that I was unable to refuse, it does not serve anything, anyway. Almost everyday in the afternoon I was a coach in some sports club, be it volleyball or basketball, and I usually planned the training sessions to coincide with the Party meetings. At the end of the year they thus summed it up: well, comrade Kolzrt attended only one of the meetings, but that was because he serves as a coach in these sports clubs, and it was all right.”