“Suddenly I began to hear people saying ‘the Second Republic.’ I didn’t understand it too much, but suddenly we found ourselves sitting three pupils at one desk in the classrooms, because we needed to make space for new schoolmates who arrived to us because they were forced to leave the border regions. Certain Rusi Petkevič and another boy from Carpathian Ruthenia suddenly appeared among us. It was before Christmas and teachers told us to bring some money the following day. We told our parents at home and we received some coins. The next day the teacher brought a huge box and she began unpacking it and explaining: ‘Children, these things here are the products of Czech glassmakers who were forced to leave the Sudetenland. They made some Christmas decorations in order to earn a living. Please buy some in order to help them.’ The decorations were mostly made from some stiff paper and painted and sprinkled over with glass particles. They were beautiful. I kept them for a long time afterwards: a decoration shaped like a little airplane.”
“About two times a year we were told to go out to the streets and go to each apartment and ask the people whether they had some old paper, bones, iron, and other materials. There would always be two or three boys going together. It was terrible, because it was for the first time that I saw what anti-Semitism meant. When we started going to the grammar school in Dušní Street, there were many people with yellow stars. There were many Jewish inhabitants there. Whenever we rang a doorbell, the people who opened the door had the Star of David on their clothes. Usually they politely told us that they didn’t have anything to give us. Eventually we received at least some tin-can or something like that. Then we found a warm place next to some basement window and there we waited until the time when we were to return. We brought back some nails and we handed them over for recycling. A year or a year and a half later it was already German women who were opening the doors for us in those apartments. They had their hair combed high; or sometimes a drunken SS man would open the door, and they always cursed us and told us to get out.”
“On May 7, my dad and I ran through the back entrance from Kazaňská Street to the government army. There was an entrance from the Národní Street, this is called Svoboda Square now, before that it was Dürich Square, and I don’t know how it was called during the war. Wehrmacht was located there. On the opposite side of the square was the elementary school which I attended, at that time it was SS Scharnhorst Schule. Things moved forward in the ministry and cease-fire was signed, and therefore I personally witnessed the soldiers of wehrmacht surrendering their weapons to the government army on that square. The building of the Ministry of National Defence was formed by a block of houses, which were separated only by a wire fence, and wehrmacht was on the north side, and the government army was on the south side. Some wehrmacht soldiers were shooting at each other with the SS men who did not want to accept the cease-fire.”
Vladimír Valta was born in Prague on January 5th, 1932. His father Václav Valta fought on the Russian front and later on the Italian front. He got himself captured and he joined the Czechoslovak Legions. He took part in fighting against Hungarians, and he returned to Prague in 1920. He became a member of the Unity of Czech Brethren Church and in 1926 he married Vlasta Srbová. With the exception of the Protectorate regime, he served in the army for his entire life. He was also an avid painter and he knew many prominent artists of the First Republic era. Vladimír Valta spent his childhood on Přemysl Square in the Nusle neighbourhood in Prague. Before he started attending elementary school, the family moved to Prague-Bubeneč close to the building of the Ministry of Defence where his father worked. Vladimír graduated from the Beneš Grammar School in Velvarská Street in 1950. He was however not admitted to university and he thus began working in the archaeology department of the Museum of the Capital City of Prague, where he analyzed the findings under the guidance of Bohuslav Novotný. Later he worked as a trainee in the biochemical laboratory in Střešovice and eventually he found a job as a designer of mechanical parts for electronic instruments in the Tesla factory on Charles Square where he was employed in the antenna department. Acting upon advice from his friend Jiří Valtr, Vladimír applied to study medicine, and after an admission appeal procedure he eventually began studying dentistry at the Medical Faculty of Charles University. In 1956 he married Hermína Eslerová, in the following year he completed his studies and he received a work placement to Litoměřice. Their daughter Vladimíra was born in 1926. He specialized in children’s dentistry until 1983 when he changed jobs due to an eye problem and he subsequently began working as the head of the department of social security administration in Litoměřice. After retiring he worked as a guide in the Ploskovice chateau for the following sixteen years.
