Oldřich Nakládal

* 1920

Forced labour during the WW2, Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
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    How I survived the bombardment in Plauen

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    “One day it happened to me when we were in the town with the boys and we were curious and stupid. When an alarm sounded, you had to hide. And where? Somewhere inside. It was dangerous outside; if you were lying in the town square, there were fighter airplanes and they were not firing directly. So we were in the town and it was for the first and last time; I did not go to the town ever again. We were walking on the town square and suddenly there was a whooooo sound. What to do now? There was an office building, and so we rushed in there and right into the basement. Everyone was in the basement. There is no other place where you can hide. So we got down into the basement and we lay down there and we kept lying there. You could not do anything else, just wait whether it would collapse or not. I was lying down there in horror as it was all collapsing around me and I felt as if I had dug a hole half a metre deep with my body. The building where we were was shaking so much, because the adjacent part totally collapsed. And I was just a short distance, two or two and a half meters, away from it.”

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    Prisoners of war in the camp

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    “There was a place in the yard where the cars did not go. They built a shack there and those people were sleeping there, even in winter, when there was no heating. In summer and in winter, they had to exercise without shirts. There was snow half a metre deep, for instance, and they had to lie down in there and exercise and exercise. And if you saw the bodies of those prisoners, that was terrible. There was a graveyard nearby, and it was a small cemetery, there was probably some small village there, but we did not go all the way there. Usually you could see so many graves dug out there… They did not go out, only for the exercise, otherwise they were inside and they worked. Only at noon, two prisoners would bring a huge vat of soup, nothing else. That was their food.”

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    Kroměříž, Dolní Zahrady, 15.10.2013

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One was not allowed to say even a single word

Oldřich Nakládal
Oldřich Nakládal
photo: Tereza Nakládalová
photo: Tereza Nakládalová
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Oldřich Nakládal was born on March 14, 1920 in Skaštice in the Kroměříž region. He attended the elementary school there for five years, and for the following three years he attended the higher elementary in Břest. Then he studied for one more year at the higher elementary school in Kroměříž and from there he transferred to a two-year trade academy. In spite of the outbreak of World War Two he completed his studies and in 1940 he began working in Prostějov. After one and a half years of work for the company Agrostroj Prostějov, an order was issued that all men born in the years 1920 and 1921, with no exceptions, were to go to do forced labour in Germany. Within several days Oldřich thus had to pack his luggage and say good-bye. He was sent to Plauen in Germany where he worked in an arms factory. He led a group of Czech workmen who were inspecting the finished goods. He experienced air raid at the end of the war and in April 1945 he returned home.

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Léta v Lageru

  • date:
    27.11.2013
  • medium type:
    Internet
  • medium name:
    Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
  • author:
    Tereza Nakládalová