Eugen Matijenko
* 1922 †︎ unknown
1. 9. 1939 - The outbreak of the WW2,
17.9.1939 - Soviet invasion of Poland ,
22. 6. 1941 – Operation Barbarossa - Nazi attack on the USSR,
1944 - 1945 - The liberation of Czechoslovakia,
8. 9. – 1. 11. 1944 - The battle of the Dukla Pass,
30. 5. 1945 – 29. 10. 1946 - Withdrawal of Germans from Czechoslovakia,
5. – 9. 5. 1945 - Prague Uprising,
8. 5. 1945 - End of WWII,
25. 2. 1948 - Communist coup d‘état in ČSR,
9. 5. 1960 - Amnesty of political prisoners,
22. 8. 1963 – Start of court restitutions
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"I wrote a leaflet and we sent it out. I gave something to him and I sent something to my addresses myself. After a while, the two gentlemen came to talk to me and took me to Ústí, where they began to investigate me and they said, 'Did you write that?' And I said that yes, that I wrote it."
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"And I remember, we received a written invitation signed by General Kutlvašr to the National Theater that there is going to be a celebration regarding the liberation of Prague. So, we participated and saw the interior of the National Theater and everything came to us so indescribably beautiful and different from what we had lived until that moment."
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"I was twenty-four at that time. At the age of twenty-four, there was a great life force, and we came to the conclusion that somebody died there because he did something wrong, but it can't happen to me."
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"I remember how we were in those mountains and even the staff united with the artillery and because it was in the mountains ... There were no tractors, there were horses and people. And we pushed the cannons into those hills. And not just us - plebs, but General Svoboda pushed them too. And it was rare and encouraging for me that he is here and that he is doing a job that one does not expect that a Commander-in-Chief to push a cannon here."
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Full recordings
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Žatec, 05.08.2005
(audio)
duration: 02:32:57
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Eugen Matijenko was born as a posthumous child on September 20, 1922 in the village Kopytkov in Volhynia in what was then Poland. He and his mother lived on their uncle’s farm in Černachov. Here he first visited the Ukrainian one-class school and later commuted to Zdolbunov. He also attended a secondary school in Rovno, which was closed by the German occupation authorities. After the liberation of the area in May 1944, he entered the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps in Rovno. He was assigned to the 1st Brigade to an auto company and then, thanks to his language skills, he was assigned to the personnel department of the staff corps and he was responsible for the records of the fallen. He also took part in the fighting in Machnówka as a part of the Carpathian-Dukla operation and thus took part in the liberation of Czechoslovakia. He experienced the end of the war in Moravia. He was demobilized in June 1946 in Žatec. After 1948, he wrote an anti-regime leaflet, which he distributed in his surroundings. The witness was arrested and the district court in Chomutov sentenced him to a 15-month unconditional sentence. Thanks to the amnesty, he was released after three months. After he had served the sentence, he worked in the regional service company Žatec, where he worked until his retirement. From November 1958, the StB kept his file under the pseudonym Malíř (Painter).