RNDr. Miloslav Nevrlý

“Once someone rang the bell and there was a Jewish family. It turned out they were family members of Mr. Votický. That was the husband of aunt Votická, who raised my father. He was a Jew. He died in 1936 already but apparently he had family. And back then, the way I understood it, they came to ask my father to hide some of their valuables because they were about to be sent to the concentration camp. I remember that my mum – panicking – started pushing me and my sister in the kitchen so that we would not see anything. It was no joke back then. You were risking death penalty for hiding some Jewish jewellery or money. They were obliged to hand them over and were risking their lives if they hadn’t done so. I don’t know the exact content [of what they came to hide] because I was obviously absent. But they left at our place a construction set – Merkur – which they brought for me. And my mum forbid me to play with it.“

“The first time I went to Slovakia was in 1953. Me and another friend had shipped four packages of stuff over and had a month-long summer camp in Látaná valley in Roháče. Back then, not even a single person would pass through the valley the whole month long. Today, the Tatra Mountains are flooded with people. We were camping there and then a windstorm torn up our tent, so we moved to an old shepherd’s hut. It was a sort of an old school, almost American expedition. That was in 1953, there was the monetary reform going on during that time. Communists have robbed the people with exchange rate one to fifty. So we needed to dry the food before. We dried crusts on the stove, so that we could bring them with us later and put them in the soup we made. That’s where I learned not to be picky with food. Later, we would spread mustard on our bread. That was a delicacy. The guys would even put toothpaste on bread when things got worse. So it taught us a lesson. Roháče in 1953.”

“Due to the fact that I was a natural scientist I was asked to become the district voluntary nature conservationist. It was a function given by the Commies. I did not have any powers. When someone wanted to cut don a tree, they needed to ask the district coordinator. But if they had cut it down without asking, then I had no chance of influencing it. I was for example also tasked to mark all nature reservations in the Jizera Mountains. I had to chop the poles, put them in the ground and paint them. I did that either alone or I got help from some young boys; they might be sixty years old grandpas today. But in the part belonging to Liberec – because that was the district I was responsible for, as opposed to Jablonec – I usually had to get it done alone.”