Vladimír Mádle

* 1946

  • "It was the paramedics with the ambulances, they arrived normally, they weren't afraid. Nurses, doctors were trying to save. They took that nurse [Eva Livečková] away right away, the dead were lying there, so they covered it up and took them away. There were too many people at the funeral. It was a public funeral, there they read the names of all the people who had died. In the urn grove there were coffins of the dead who had been shot by the Russians."

  • "They were dodging towards the post office, going past the town hall down Moskovská Street. The street, it's quite narrow there, and they drove into an arcade. That's what happened. Practically the tenant who lived there was asleep, and you can see how he collapsed with his bed. We spoke to the Russians, we knew Russian from school. And we said, what are they doing? And they said, "We came to save you." We said, "Shit, you're shooting at us! And now there were these young guys, they didn't know where they were. There were Hungarians, Romanians, Poles. And that's how cruel it turned out."

  • "On the morning of 21 August, my father-in-law woke me up: 'Wake up, it's war.' I said: 'Are you coming from the pub or what? How can there be a war?' - 'The Russians have invaded us. They're already in Liberec.' So I got dressed and went. At that time I was working as a plumber on the overhaul of Post Office 1. We didn't even reach the terminus, we had to get off at Textilana. We arrived in front of the post office, and there were already the first dead - Eva Livečková, a nurse, and others. It was a cruel moment."

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    Jablonec nad Nisou, 26.01.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 01:07:50
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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I never liked my so-called friends from the Soviet Union. After the occupation in 1968, I know why

Vladimír Mádle at the army in 1965
Vladimír Mádle at the army in 1965
photo: archive of Vladimír Mádle

Vladimír Mádle was born on 5 September 1946 in Liberec. His parents, Vladimír and Věra, née Suchardová, came to Liberec after the Germans were expelled from the Jičín region as part of the settlement of the border area. His father trained as a tailor and during the war was forced to work in the village of Velvěty in Teplice. After the liberation, he worked in Dolní Hanychov in Liberec as a postmaster, later as a planner and worker in the PaM department (labour and wages) at the District Administration of Communications in Jablonec nad Nisou. His mother, who was orphaned at an early age and only completed primary school, worked at the District Institute of National Health in Liberec. Vladimír Mádle was trained as a construction plumber in the Stavokombinat in Liberec. He completed his basic military service with the Border Guard in Šumava. He moved from Sušice, where the unit was based, to the Liberec Road Troops in the second year of the war. As a construction plumber, he first participated in the establishment of a housing estate built by the Hradec Králové Earthworks and later in Klášterec nad Ohří. After the war, he joined Stavokombinat Liberec and then moved to the District Administration of Communications in Jablonec nad Nisou, where he moved with his family. On 21 August 1968, at the time of the occupation by the five communist states of the Warsaw Pact led by the Soviet Union, he became an eyewitness to the tragic events in front of the Liberec Town Hall, which cost nine lives. He even wanted to throw a decorative granite stone at the occupiers from the post office building. But his partner Petr Peukrt talked him out of it. At the age of 50, he retired on disability after several injuries, but he was still working part-time until 2018. In 2024 he lived with his second wife Milena, née Paldusová, in Jablonec nad Nisou. His first wife, Olga, maiden name Zrubcová, died tragically in 1999 while hiking in Switzerland. Vladimír Mádle has daughters Monika, Olga and Vera, three granddaughters and three grandsons. In 2024 he lived in Jablonec nad Nisou.