Josef Mašek

“The first band was started by the teacher Vincenc Zamouřil, whom they murdered in Gerník. That was before the First World War. A second band was formed in the time between the wars, I have photos. This man named Karel Bouda was the drummer, I got to know most of the players. Eman Nejedlý played the clarinet, Josef Bouda played the trumpet, and Karel Kameník played the trumpet too. Mr Bouda, the drummer, I got to know him, he was my neighbour. But I never got to hear them play because they played before the Second World War. Another one of them is Karel Cizler, who played the Flugelhorn. When we formed a band and played at the cultural centre, he always played the horn and always cried about how beautiful it was. He recounted how they used to play. They had this story. Austria was here, and they went to Serbia to play in Bela Crkva.”

“There were changes, and people started leaving. Do you know who took our first people from Romania? It was a whole bus, it was called a ‘Mitaska’. They took the first load of people. The men went to Bohemia, and six months later, they returned with a car from the Czech Republic. And so the others said, ‘I’ll go too, I’ll go.’ And so they started leaving. And the biggest wave of people leaving for the Czech Republic was from 1995–1996. That’s when the most people left.”

“When they left [for Bohemia] and mainly, when my young friends were leaving, it was as if a chunk had been ripped from my heart. My wife taught at the school, we went to dancing lessons with our accordion. We had beautiful ensembles and went to Prague to play, we played in Prague 6 at the Břevnov sanctification feast. I look at Gerník. In the Gerník school we have five children.”