Ludvík Vala

* 1935

  • "Every Christmas Eve, when the first star came out, musicians would walk from the end of the village playing and a few girls singing the carols. Following them was the village shepherd who had a large whip several feet long and he would crack it, and his wife was the last. She carried a big basket on her back and people gave her treats, whatever they could. Apples and other fruit, and maybe money, I don't know. He was in fact the village shepherd, and was one of the poorest people in the village."

  • "The next was when they bombed Břeclav. It was such a gloomy, cloudy day, with low clouds. I guess the airmen couldn't see the ground, they had to go around again and again, and the noise kept coming from various directions and then disappearing again. It would go on for a while and then it would fade away again and so on a couple of times, so they were probably circling over Břeclav. Then they dropped the bombs. I guess they were supposed to hit the station, but they missed it and hit this side of the Dyje River where the industrial plant was. The district was called Dubič. Many people got hit there, as many houses were destroyed all the way to the square, and the church took a direct bomb hit."

  • "People wanted to get to Austria, and he knew exactly where and how to do it, so he took them across the border to Austria. He told me a little story. See, he would get paid only when they had crossed the border and were free to go. One day, the one man being guided was about to pay, but instead he put his hand inside his coat and slowly pulled out his pistol. I guess he was counting on my dad getting scared and running away. But my father had been to the frontline in Russia and Italy and wasn't easily scared. So instead of running away, he stepped close to that man. And now the man got scared for a change, put the pistol back in and paid my dad."

  • Full recordings
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    Břeclav - Poštorná, 03.04.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:38:56
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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War was just an adventurous game for us for a long time.

Ludvík Vala in 2019
Ludvík Vala in 2019
photo: PNS

Ludvík Vala was born in Břeclav on 20 December 1935 as the youngest of three children. His father Vladislav worked as a labourer and guided people across the border to Austria between the wars; his mother Františka took care of the household. In September 1938 he witnessed the mobilisation of the Czechoslovak army; soldiers settled in a bunker not far from their house, where Ludvík visited them. In 1939, he joined a preschool where a German teacher, called Tante Heli, was in charge. Later in school, he was a classmate to children in a higher class, as there were not enough teachers. He remembers the air raids on Breclav and the liberation of nearby Lanžhot by the Red Army, during which they hid in a neighbour’s cellar. After the war he went to Junák boy scouts but quit when the communists turned the organisation into the Pioneers. He completed a business academy and worked as a clerk. In 1959 he married and had three children. In August 1968, he witnessed a tank convoy passing through Břeclav, utterly destroying the local roads. He still lives in Břeclav – Poštorná in the house where he was born.