Vilém Vogt

* 1938

  • "I loaded up the married couple and we were on our way to Svitavy, Litomyšl and there were columns, there were tanks at Hradec, I almost drove under them with the Felicia. And I was zigzagging between them and passing them. We arrived in Prague, he knew the place, the Prague guy, so I drove them home, left my wife there and immediately he directed me to find Maruska, and they cheered, immediately: 'Vilda, what are you doing here?' - 'Maruska, pack up, I'm coming for you', so she immediately went to get her things, we got in the car and we drove back. Now we were going out of Prague, we cross this hill and a swarm of tanks and we were among them. 'Back, back, back, halt...' - 'What are you shouting, sfaky sfaky? I'm going home.' They waved their machine guns in front of us. So I said, 'You fools,' so I turned around, drove back along the road and along the dirt road to Poděbrady to the state road and we were already driving back to Hradec Králové."

  • "My mother was the worst teacher, kicked out of school, terrible, she almost had a breakdown. I was studying in the metal service, that was in thirty-four. My grandfather was in the hospital for an operation with stomach ulcers, and my brother, he was in the apprenticeship, he was learning to be a baker somewhere near Jihlava, so I commuted from that metal service from Třebová to Kunčina. So I came home, the door of the two hundred and thirty-two [the original house] was broken, half the furniture gone, my friends next door said, 'They took it away on a wagon.' That they were going to make a kindergarten there [in the former house], well, Kunčina, it's a long village five kilometres away and it's connected to Nová Ves right away. There was the last farm in Kunčina, I don't remember the name of the farmer who was evicted, that we would move in there. But there was nothing there, the Communists had cattle there for a year, they founded the Communist Party in the fifty-second year, they started these cooperatives, so what did it look like there? Horror and horror."

  • "I used to fish in the stream there as a boy, what was I, four or five years old, and now suddenly the boss, the German commander, stopped with the 'kadeef', the cap, and saluted, so I saluted him too. He got out and brought me a packet of sweets, he saluted me, then the whole column came by and saluted me, I was standing in the stream catching fish. And so I always wondered if they had reached Germany happily when they were retreating. What about that Hitler, but also that Stalin, what people died because of them..."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Brno, 08.06.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 03:06:24
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - JMK REG ED
  • 2

    Brno, 18.06.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 56:54
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - JMK REG ED
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We will eliminate religion quietly

Vilém Vogt, Slovan Moravská Třebová
Vilém Vogt, Slovan Moravská Třebová
photo: archive of a witness

Vilém Vogt was born on 21 July 1938 in Boskovice as the first child of his parents Věra and Vilém Vogt. A year after his birth, his father tragically died and his mother, as a teacher, had to move frequently for work. During and at the end of the war he had several encounters with German soldiers. Mum married for a second time, to František Vymětal, and after the war the family moved to Kunčina near Moravská Třebová, which was part of the displaced Sudetenland. In the 1950s, the witness witnessed the forced collectivization and bullying of his mother and his surrogate father. His mother became an uncomfortable teacher, his father was labelled a man who hated work and the family had to move involuntarily to an unsuitable house. The witness trained as a turner and worked for several years at Hedva Moravská Třebová, at the State Forests, later at Vlněna Brno and at the South Moravian Bakeries. In 1970, he married Zdeňka Veselá and they had four children, Vilém (1972-1995, committed suicide), Petr (1973), Tomáš (1980) and Marie (1986). In August 1968, he made the dangerous journey from Moravia to Prague, full of columns of occupying armies. Because of his religious beliefs, he had problems with his superiors during the normalization period. He arranged the transfer of property to his extended family for a friend who had emigrated. He was active in football all his life, raised pigeons and is the author of several improvement proposals. He considers his faith in God to be the most important thing in his life, and currently (2024) lives with his wife in Brno.