Josef Srkal

* 1932

National minorities, Volhynian Czechs, Czech minority in the former USSR, Witnesses of local events connected to WWII, Repatriated
22. 6. 1941 – Operation Barbarossa - Nazi attack on the USSR, 10. 7. 1946 – Agreement on Volhynian Czechs option with the USSR, 23. 2. 1949 – Beginning the forced agricultural collectivisation, Western Ukrainian lands within Poland 1919–1939, 1941-1944 - Nazi occupation of Ukraine, 1943 - Conflict between Poles and Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia and Volhynia
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    defectors of the Red army

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    "I'll tell you about my dad, he was with the Red Army. They took part in drilling, but my dad and Mr. Novák wouldn’t touch a gun because they were Christians. So they were to be shot as defectors. Their superiors said that war is war and that this wouldn’t be tolerated. So they were to be shot the next day. They lay at night and in the morning they were supposed to be shot. Novák had a dream in which they escaped the shooting, survived and returned home. My dad too, he had exactly the same dream. In short, in the morning, they were taken by three soldiers who led them to a ravine about a kilometer away, where they were supposed to shoot them. Instead of that, one of the soldiers told them to run away. He somehow distracted the other two and my dad and his friend ran away and they couldn’t catch them anymore. They hid somewhere and arrived home from Suchobezvodnej. They both grew massive beards and turned themselves into terribly old man. Old man were not drafted to the army and thus they sat out the at home."

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    Away from the kholkhoz

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    "Some were dropped off Žatec or Podbořany, but we drove up to Bochov to such wooden buildings, where we moved in. From there, we were searching for a place to live. So we ended up in Tašovice. In Tašovice, we took a small farm with six hectares. My dad made a living as a tailor and me and Láďa cultivated our land. When they came up with the collective farms in 1948, when Gottwald won, we quickly got away from there, since we didn’t want to end up in the kolkhoz. We moved to Stachov. From Stachov, we then went to Podbořany."

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    Mass murder of Jews from Moštěnice

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    "Before they began moving Jews to concentration camps, they murdered them on the sidelines. Between the villages of Moštěnice and Futorem, there was such a tiny gorge, otherwise the land was flat. They took the Jews into the gorge. There were two hundred or even more Jews there. They had to dig a big hole. The people from the surrounding villages were herded there to watch it. I witnessed the shooting of the Jews in that gorge. They were lined up in front of the pit and shot. They were shot by the whole squad. One soldier had standing in front of him a young woman. She was very pretty, perhaps he liked her. Anyway, he didn’t fire. The woman was left standing while the others fell into the hole. Another German came to that soldier, shot him on the spot, dumped him in the hole and the woman went right after him."

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    Siřem, 21.05.2013

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    duration: 37:00
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The Ukrainian nationalists raged at night, the Russians during the day and the rest in the evening

Srkal orez.jpg (historic)
Josef Srkal
photo: foto Petr Zemánek a přefoceno z archívu pamětníka
photo: foto Petr Zemánek a přefoceno z archívu pamětníka
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Josef Srkal comes from a Czech evangelical family that had been settled for several generations in Volhynia. He was born in 1932, in Moštěnice, district of Ostrog, Rovno region. His father worked as a tailor and his mother - a seamstress - raised a total of eight children. At the beginning of the Second World War, Moštěnice and the western part of Volhynia (since 1921 part of Poland) was occupied by the Soviet Union. The father of Mr. Srkal was mobilized into the Red Army, but being a pacifist, he deserted and went into hiding at home for the rest of the war. In the course of the war, the village was visited by the Soviet-German front, it was ransacked by units of the Wehrmacht and later by the Ukrainian nationalists. Josef Srkal witnessed a series of atrocities committed during the Second World War. In 1947, he came with his family to Czechoslovakia. He became a farmer in Kašovice and later in Podbořany. Mr. Josef Srkal nowadays lives in Siřem.  

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  • Josef Srkal
    Josef Srkal
    photo: foto Petr Zemánek a přefoceno z archívu pamětníka
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  • photo: foto Petr Zemánek a přefoceno z archívu pamětníka
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