Jiří Sýkora

* 1939

  • “And I know that it suddenly we knew that there are people's militia in the garages and that they came from Most or Teplice. Oh, and that there was simply a people's militia there and that you just have to wait for instructions. That was on Tuesday, so which date was it? I now, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, when was it, the twenty-first, it was the twenty-first. But, the people's militias were then ordered to go back home. They arrived in Prague at night and placed them in various secret corners literally, so that the people of Prague would not know. Of course the information leaked, or did it not.”

  • “On 20th August there was a rumble at half past ten in the evening. We lived in Vršovice and planes flew from Strašnice, i.e. from the east. And, I said: 'Those are Russian bombers.' They were recognizable not as airplanes, but one recognized what type, what model of airplane it was. I said: 'What is going on, they are flying over us, they are fooling around here, it's some kind of exercise or something, well anyway.'”

  • "Well, on the evening of the May 5th, the Germans came there, they came from Benešov with tanks, the SS units came there and drove around our fields with those tanks behind the house, literally behind the garden, behind our house. However, they haven't ventured into the barracks yet. One thing they did was that there was a farm that farmed those fields, called Reitknechtka. And there they had the Czechoslovak flag on the 5th. Well, the Germans selected all the men from the age of fifteen to the oldest they found there, left them there, near today, it was called Moderna. The Moderna, the communists demolished it when they were building the highway, as it was in their way. It was such a first-republic, super architecturally elaborated modern house. Well, somewhere nearby they had them dig graves, a grave that was, and there were about ten or fifteen of those guys from that farm and they shot them all.''

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    Praha, 07.05.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:20:31
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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We all had our families, we all had children, and no one wanted to get fired

J. Sýkora
J. Sýkora
photo: žákovský tým PNS

Jiří Sýkora was born on August 24, 1939 in Prague. His father was a tram driver and conductor, and during the war he got into conflict with the Germans several times. At the end of the war, Jiří experienced the Prague Uprising at Pankrác, where fierce fighting took place. After his studies, he started working, but before long, he had to join the army. He then worked for the longest time at Kovoprojekt in Prague. He observed the August invasion and the Velvet Revolution from the company offices on Wenceslas Square.