(Q: “And do you remember what happened to the factory?”) “Russians looted everything. People said that they even took the wiring from the walls. They plundered it, Jesus, all that was left were just bare walls.” (“Russian soldiers?”) “Yes, and all the equipment was taken to Russia. Because they had reparations, didn’t they. I didn’t go there. I could because I did maintenance at the railways and it wasn’t far but I didn’t. But it doesn’t really matter. (“And you had some papers certifying that you were forced to work for the Reich?”) “I was released and I heard that they were looking for people at the railways. I applied and got there with a good reference of somebody I knew, inspector Faltys. And they took us to Liberec. Faltys had a cottage in Navarov so that was where he knew me from. And when he came, my colleagues were all confused that we knew each other. He was very keen on fishing. He got me the job and since then I’ve been at the railway.”
“I worked for Siemens which was in fact Radiotechna in Nová Paka. When the factory was German, the work was not so bad. I was a mechanic and a clerk because I was professionally trained. At the entry examination, doctor Rosenkranz looked at my hands and asked me: ‘What do you solder with?’ So I told him: ‘With a soldering iron and tin alloy and flux, some bonds require a use of processed acid.’ So they accepted me and I went to the assembly line for capacitor manufacture. And from the very start I was in charge and had to organize everything from managing the women who worked there to providing the workers with material and tools. But don’t write this. It was hard work but it was quite reasonable. (And when was it?) It was in 1943. We went to Nová Paka where they sorted us. Some wanted to work for Benz and some wanted to go to Radiotechna, which was a division of Siemens. So we went there and we were rewarded accordingly.”
“(Do you remember the late sixties or the events of 1968 here in Liberec? Do you remember any shooting or anything like that?) I remember the tanks and us standing there but nothing else. One of the soldiers tore down the archway when he went through one of the posts with a tank. They were also shooting in the air but nothing else. (And you saw or heard?) I saw it because we stood right next to the tanks, and petrol was pouring because the reservoir broke on one of the tanks right there. They were passing through a narrow street. (Moskevská or Pražská?) Moskevská. There were trams in Pražská. (And there was some shooting at the square. And somebody was killed.) I heard about that but I don’t know what exactly happened. We didn’t see anything. (And you said that you were coming back from Germany the day before--the 21st August. Did anything happen there?) No, but the Germans told us to be cautious because there were a lot of Russian soldiers there. I came home in the evening and it was about ten o‘clock when they woke me up with a telephone call. I had to go to the flat where the stationmaster and the chief of the depot lived to tell them that the occupation had begun and we all have to go to work. The tracks up to Dresden were lined with tanks, they were also transported on wagons. And that evening it started. That’s what I remember.”
“(What working hours did you do?) It changed. At the beginning, it was quite good – morning shift from six to two and evening shift from two to ten. Then we started doing 12 hour shifts, nightshifts from midnight to noon and 72 hour shifts. There were no holidays, every hour we had to manufacture the German victory. The doctor was a crook but there was also a German, what was his name... Schwaverb or something like that and he was a good person, and then there was also the single one, Fritz Rupin. That poor guy had to join the army at the beginning of 1945 because he wasn’t married. And he was crying but he had to go. The times were tough. There was nothing you could do. (Do you know what happened to him after the war?) No, I didn’t find out. (And where did you sleep when you worked at Siemens?) There was a camp with some kind of doghouses. I was often coming from Navarov and continued often to work. I came on the midnight train and started a shift at the factory. This was in the last days of war in 1945. Once I shook hands with Otto von Siemens. He came there to inspect us. Such a nice, good looking man, blonde and pale with rosy cheeks. I have an old stamp with him somewhere, I kept it. (And how many workers slept in each house?) Around four or five, I don’t remember. (And you were all about the same age?) All born in 1924, we were given to Hitler, as they called it. (And did women work there?) Yes they did. Schielhammer was a good man, he was responsible for the blackout."
(Q: “Did anything interesting happen while you were patrolling the border?”) “Once we got lost in the mountains and we came out at the German side of the border. The car could hardly go through the rough terrain but we carried on and the Germans saw us and called ‘Zurück, zurück, zurück!’ It was harvest time. There were old grandmas in the fields dressed in folk costumes and we stared at them. And we could easily escape to Germany. That would be a scandal at the barracks.” “Certainly, and were you thinking about it?” “No, it just happened. We were driving through the woods and we suddenly appeared in the field. So the driver did a u-turn and hurried back.”
“The times were hard and you had to cope with it. Sometimes there was enough bread and sometimes there wasn‘t, sometimes it was fresh and sometimes it was old, you know...”
Dobroslav Průšek was born on the 5th of August 1924 in Lhotka near Zlatá Olešnice. His father was a servant, worker and an administrator at the Navarov manor. He spent his childhood in Lhotka, which is situated in the foothills of the Jizera Mountains. He often helped his father in the field. He finished five years of basic school and three years at a municipal school in Jesenné. During the war, he worked as a forced laborer in Siemens (Radiotechna) in Nová Paka. He was a foreman and a mechanic. By the end of the war, he got a job at the railway. He lived in Turnov and was later transferred to Liberec where he worked as a railwayworker-- a signalman. After the war, he enlisted in the army for two years as a signalman. In June 1948, his unit was transferred to Horšovský Týn to patrol the state border. After the service, he returned to Liberec and worked at the railways again. He has been married twice and has two daughters. He retired in 1984.
