"There was a Czech barracks and they were occupied by the Germans, and on that facade towards the square there was a big sign - 'Für deutschen soldaten ist nichts unmöglich.' It was visible; it was simply visible at a distance. It must have been in large print. "Nothing is impossible for German soldiers." There was once a case where one of us spat in front of the youth, the Hitler Youth, right in the square. And there came a report, a complaint to school, we were still in general elementary school. Well, he had a problem with that, and somehow it turned out all right."
"I was staying in the village for a year. I got acquainted with nature, with people, understanding a stream flowed there and flowers grew in the meadow. It was all new to me. The children started talking to me. And when about a year passed, it was time for me to start attending the first grade of school. I went there with others from the village as well, so I met them. It wasn't that far, but not quite close. That's how I went to first class that year. I did not have good results. I didn't talk to anyone, no one talked to me - that was the situation while I was in Bolehošť, when I still had parents and when I lost them too. It all changed gradually when I went to school. But it was still in me. I failed at school. Maths and classes of religion were both a failure. So you can see that I just didn't talk, apparently. It turned out that on the impulse of my uncle's wife, my uncle took me to the orphanage."
"In 1938, a larger car arrived there with a trumpeter up on the roof, and the trumpeter introduced us out loud to us saying that we were becoming part of the Gross Deutsche Reich. On the very first day afterwards, we found out that there were no Czech teachers anymore, but all were German teachers. The lessons were like that, starting with learning the biography of Adolf Hitler, who he was, etc., and at the same time introducing us to the German anthem, singing a little, and so on. And they started speaking German to us too. And it would continue like this, but the situation changed, because there was a part of the pilots in the orphanage I was in, and another part moved there later. It had to be cleared there, more space for the second part. And they moved us inland, as they said, to Žamberk - and also to the orphanage."
Bohuslav Vokoun was born on September 17, 1928 in Prague and lived with his parents in Bolehošť. His mother Marie (1902 - 1933), née Vanická, died when his son was five years old, and Bohuslav’s father, František Vokoun (1908 - 1934), died half a year later. Little Bohuslav spent some time in the family of his uncle, František Vanický, in Velká Ledská. After a failure in the first class, he was transferred to an orphanage in Horní Čermná, and after the occupation of the Sudetenland, the children moved to an orphanage in Žamberk in 1939. There was a strict regime in the institute, by which the nuns raised their wards. In 1942 he went to Častolovice to study bakery. In the years 1947-1948 he worked on the Youth Construction in Horní Litvínov. In 1948 he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). From 1948 to 1950 he graduated from the Industrial School in Pardubice and from 1955 to 1960 from the University of Chemical Technology in Prague. He lived and worked mainly in Prague, spending the longest part of his professional life there at the Research Institute of Food and Chemical Technology. After marrying Jana, née Enders (1944 - 1983), their son was born in 1968. He has an older son from a previous relationship with a girlfriend from Slovakia. On August 21, 1968, he was right on the streets of Prague. During subsequent inspections, he said that he did not agree with the invasion of Czechoslovakia by “brotherly” troops, and therefore in 1970 he was removed from the register of members of the Communist Party. However, it did not have a negative effect on his life; he was paradoxically reassigned to a more advantageous position. During his career as a bakery technologist, he travelled to bakeries in Czechoslovakia and abroad to train employees in new machinery. In 2020, he lived alone in Záchlumí near Žamberk.
School board of the eleven-year course class for workers in Košátky 1954/55, Bohuslav Vokoun is in the second row from the bottom, first from the right
School board of the eleven-year course class for workers in Košátky 1954/55, Bohuslav Vokoun is in the second row from the bottom, first from the right
