Oldřich Sojka

* 1944

  • “So we did things like, for instance, we took bed sheets and spread them out across the alley leading to the entrance – ‘Occupants shall not pass’. Because we had heard that the Ruskies would come and that they’d steal our watches, we gathered all our valuables in one place, unknown to everyone; but no one came [to the hospital – ed.]. I have one horrific personal experience. The Ruskies ran over a boy, a motorbiker, and they left him there, screaming. No one was allowed to go to him, they’d shoot into the air. He lay there in the ditch until night-time, and then finally, when they left, the rescue workers could get to him. So the boy, I don’t know, twenty-five years old, was screaming in pain there, with an injury to his head. Then they loaded him up, and I went with him in the ambulance to Pilsen. He died soon after.”

  • “The original housing decree was, I think, for house number 37, which was practically a ruin. I think that a Mr Burza lived there, I’m afraid. Mum resisted really hard, and so we went the rounds of the houses with some secretary, of the committee I guess, and lots of them were empty. So in the end we got house number 6, which was the former mayor’s house under Germany. A beautiful Baroque building with two attics, a courtyard, an extension, and one pear tree. Based on the things that were all over the place, it had served as the HQ for the American army. So, spectacular and wonderful; we found a machine-gun belt there, and made a fire. There were bullets flying in all directions, fabulous. Surprisingly, no one was hurt.”

  • “It was interesting how the news spread through the street without any modern information technologies. Of course, I must have mentioned it somewhere. A book drive was organised for me as a parting gift. My friends from the street said heart-breaking farewells; no one knew how long I would be gone, and it was for a very long time. The remarkable thing is that the deportation decree was cancelled, or rather, the reason for the investigation was already cancelled in 1953. I have the documentation where the housing department of the united national committee writes that accommodation cannot be secured or provided in Pilsen. The trip ended up lasting six years from 1953 to 1959.”

  • “It was out of the blue. The deportation decree was delivered just after midday on Saturday, and at six o’clock on Sunday the moving vans parked under our windows. So we had one afternoon and overnight to pack. You couldn’t pack everything, so part of the property was lent out and stored with friends in the vicinity. The things we could were packed and moved.”

  • “But to top it all – there wasn’t room in the students’ hall for me in sixty-eight, I mean, in sixty-nine. So I found accommodation in the place where Kačerov Depot is today. Back then there were Italian war buildings there. And accommodation for Charles University, in these kind of bungalows. Basically just two furnished rooms for about fifteen people each. There was only one free bed there, and that was Palach’s bed. So I slept in Palach’s bed for some time, and I had his posters around me. He loved the Far East, so there were things like pictures of elephants in a rice paddy, and so on. I wanted to take it with me as a keepsake, but I kept thinking there was plenty of time for that. They redecorated the place over Christmas, tore everything down, and there was nothing left at all. I was fated to always just miss Jan Palach, in a roundabout way, but to be part of it a bit as well.”

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    Plzeň, 16.03.2018

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After years of Communist decay, people were hungry for something meaningful and useful

Sojka Oldřich 1955
Sojka Oldřich 1955
photo: archiv pamětníka

Oldřich Sojka was born on 20 September 1944 in Pilsen. His father, Oldřich Sojka Sr, was assigned to forced labour at the Škoda Works there at the time while also serving in the Luftschutz, an anti-air defence organisation. The Sojkas’ house was hit during one air raid, but luckily they were hiding in a nearby bomb shelter at the time. They lived with some friends until 1947. After the war his father renewed the family firm that produced metal furniture. He rebuilt the house and was employed as the national administrator of a large company in Cheb. Oldřich’s mother Marie, née Hošková, took up management of the family business in Pilsen. Following the Communist coup in February 1948, the family business was confiscated. Oldřich Sojka Sr was arrested by State Security in 1950. His case was part of the fabricated charges and show trial of Operation Olga. He was lucky - after enduring a year and a half of cruel imprisonment in custody, he could return home and begin earning the family’s living as a craftsman. In 1953 the family was forced to move to Úterý in the northern part of the Pilsen Region. They were not allowed to return to Pilsen until 1959. Oldřich did not receive recommendation for further study, and it was only thanks to his father’s contacts that he enrolled at an eleven-year school in Pilsen. A similar process awaited him in his efforts to study medicine, which he did not complete. He passed another set secondary-school finals as an X-ray laboratory assistant. In the 1960s he worked in the health sector. In spring 1968 he married. He witnessed the dramatic moments of the Soviet occupation in Planá near Mariánské Lázně and in Pilsen by the radio building. He started studying medicine again and graduated from the Third Faculty of Medicine of Charles University in 1973. As he claims, he has worked a total of fifty years at the Municipal Public Health Office in Pilsen. After 1989 he was active in the city council and in the Czech Social Democratic Party.