Josef Parpel
* 1924 †︎ 2009
Czech minority in the former USSR,
National minorities,
The national, ethnic or religious minorities in Poland,
Victim of persecution due the forced agricultural collectivisation,
Repatriated,
Member of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps (General Svoboda's army),
Re-emigration of Czechs after 1945,
Witnesses of local events connected to WWII,
Svědci lokálních událostí z éry komunismu,
Veteran of WW2, eastern front,
Volhynian Czechs,
Farmer
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"Now, after sixty years. I was getting an X-ray. I went for X-rays and never found out until now that I still have three shards in my lungs."
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And for me, it was the worst when I was in Slovakia. When I crossed the border and I was already thinking, 'I'm home!' And it wasn't home yet. Then there were the hard fights. I had a drum and went to fix the broken connection. They fired mortar fire, and that's where I got it. Fortunately, they saw me there, so they came and took me - a chest shot and a lung shot . In my coat, I saw that when I breathe, how the blood was gushing. I fell and then saw nothing. "
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"The sister was taken by the Germans. And the parents were supposed to come to the district town, to Dubno. Father came there and they said they had shot our sister and they had to be shot as well. So the father and mother ran away, they managed to escape. There was three of us at home - a little boy, a sister and I. So my father told them to run away. So we ran away and hid for a year in Czech and Ukrainian villages, until the arrival of the Soviet army in Volhynia. "
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"[My brother] came to me. And he learned that we were two brothers there. I was in messaging and he came there, it was in the trenches. I didn't know him because there was a separation and we haven't seen each other for five years or maybe more. He came there and told me if I knew him. I said no. Then I said, 'Aren't you Vasek?' [He said] yes. We hugged and it was quite sad, but also happy that we met. "
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Full recordings
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Podbořany, 14.08.2005
(audio)
duration: 51:33
Full recordings are available only for logged users.
After being hit by a grenade, I saw that when I breathed, the blood and everything around it was gushing
Josef Parpel was born on October 10, 1924 in the town of Verba in Volhynia on what was then Polish, now Ukrainian. His parents ran a shop, a butcher’s shop and an inn with a ballroom. After the occupation of the western part of Volyn by the Soviet Union, their business was nationalized. The witness’s eldest brother, Vaclav, was imprisoned in a Soviet camp, from where he was later saved by joining a Czechoslovak foreign unit in the USSR. Meanwhile, in June 1941, Volhynia was occupied by Nazi Germany. According to the witness, the Nazis executed his sister, their parents were also threatened with death, but in the end they managed to escape from prison. Josef and his siblings then hid in the surrounding villages for more than a year. The witness entered the 1st Czechoslovak army division on April 10, 1944. As a radio operator, he underwent a short military training in Bessarabia and then continued to the front near Dukla, where he met his brother Vaclav. Already on Slovak territory, the witness was hit by a mortar grenade during the repair of a broken connection and suffered a gunshot wound to the chest and lungs. He was taken from the field hospital to a hospital in Lviv and then sent for convalescence to a spa in Pyatigorsk, southern Russia, where he remained until the end of the war. After his release, he went to Prague, where he met his brothers. He took over the Czechoslovak War Cross from President Edvard Beneš and acquired a farmstead in Očíhov near Podbořany through priority. In the 1950s, his economy was collectivized and incorporated into a single agricultural cooperative. Until his retirement, the witness worked as a zootechnician. Sixty years after his war wounds, three more mortar shrapnel fragments were found during an X-ray of his lungs. He lived in Podbořany at the time of filming the interview (2005). He died on July 27, 2009.