Jaromír Kutek
* 1923 †︎ 2012
Czech minority in the former USSR,
National minorities,
The national, ethnic or religious minorities in Poland,
Member of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps (General Svoboda's army),
Re-emigration of Czechs after 1945,
Witnesses of local events connected to WWII,
Svědci lokálních událostí z éry komunismu,
Veteran of WW2, eastern front,
Volhynian Czechs
1. 9. 1939 - The outbreak of the WW2,
17.9.1939 - Soviet invasion of Poland ,
1941-1944 - Nazi occupation of Ukraine,
22. 6. 1941 – Operation Barbarossa - Nazi attack on the USSR,
8. 9. – 1. 11. 1944 - The battle of the Dukla Pass,
The liberation of the city of Ostrava,
30. 5. 1945 – 29. 10. 1946 - Withdrawal of Germans from Czechoslovakia,
8. 5. 1945 - End of WWII,
10. 7. 1946 – Agreement on Volhynian Czechs option with the USSR,
25. 2. 1948 - Communist coup d‘état in ČSR,
23. 2. 1949 – Beginning the forced agricultural collectivisation
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"We were led more to the Soviets. We sang: 'And in that America I will find a girl to Czech music ...' It was probably a song from the First World War. And they forbade it. "
"Who forbade you to do that?"
"Head officer. We couldn’t sing it, and that was it. "
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"And there were big holes from the bomb. And he [the tank] drove into that pit and he couldn't get out. A second tank arrived and pulled us out. We were tying the ropes together when a mine fell and then, an explosion. I put my hand up and lay down on it. I had broken bones from the shrapnel. The bones were knocked out, so the ambulance took me on a motorbike with a boat and took me for field treatment. There they bandaged me and sent me to Rybnik for surgery. "
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"And in March we began the attack on Ostrava. At 9:30 in the daytime because there was fog. That's when I saw the katyusha shoot. We took our position, waited until the morning to see who was going where. Behind us, the katyushas came out of the forest and shot in front of us [rockets] at the German trenches. Then we saw that blood was coming out of the Germans' ears from the explosions."
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"We were supposed to go away on March 26 or 27, but nobody knew where to. Only the head officers knew that. We came to the station, the Germans raided and bombed. We couldn’t believe our eyes. Many Czechs fell there, I don't know how many, but too many. The commander of our battalion, Buršík, shouted at us: 'Hurry out of the station and go to the barracks.' We went there and the bombs, as they fell, destroyed three floors. The ceilings were being torn apart and everything was torn out, the windows were broken. That was at night. Many laid down under a tree, and were there until the morning."
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Full recordings
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Nečemice, 13.08.2005
(audio)
duration: 56:21
Full recordings are available only for logged users.
I covered my face with my hand, and the shrapnel knocked out the bones in my forearm.
biography
Jaromír Kutek was born on December 3, 1923 in the village of Okolek in Volhynia. The municipality fell into the territory that fell to the Soviet Union after 1921. Their family farmed here on 20 hectares of land, which was bought by the witness’s grandfather after leaving Bohemia in 1869. The witness was one of nine children, underwent patriotic upbringing and attended a Czech school for the first four grades. Their family was threatened with transport to labour camps after 1939. The area of land was reallocated among all the witnesses’ siblings, yet their agricultural land was taken over by a kolkhoz. Jaromir’s older brother enlisted in the Red Army early in World War II and died on the war front. On March 20, 1944, the witness enlisted in the Czech Army Corps in Rovno, where he experienced the bombing of a railway station before leaving for military training. He received tank training and immediately afterwards joined the battle for Dukla. Under the command of Officer Josef Buršík, he fought his way across the Eastern Front to the territory of Silesia, where he was seriously injured by a mine explosion and shrapnel during the Ostrava-Opava operation. After initial treatment in a field hospital, he was transferred to a hospital in Rybnik, Poland, for surgery and then airlifted to Krakow. After another month of treatment, he was put on a train with other wounded and taken to a hospital in the Armenian SSR, where he spent almost the next three months in treatment. After his return to Czechoslovakia, he left the army and from November 1945 moved to an estate in Nečemice in the Žatec region, to which he obtained a preferential right. Before long, other family members from Volyně moved in with him and worked with him in the local unified agricultural cooperative from the 1950s on. At the time of filming he lived in Nečemice (2005). He died on February 12, 2012 and was buried in a local cemetery.