Václav Chabr

* 1943

  • "The day before, I put my suitcases in the storage room so no one would see me with my suitcase, and at home I said I was going to Germany to visit friends. Well, I left. And that's what my mother told me later when she visited me in Germany. The police or State Security came there - she didn't recognize it - and they asked where I was. And my mother said, 'Well, at work.' They said, 'We were there and they said he was going somewhere.' My mother said, 'Yeah, yeah, he said he was going somewhere. He was going to Germany.' And they said, 'Can we phone?' I was surprised they asked if he could phone. You know, there were no cell phones back then. So they would call and my mother [had] her [ears] perked up to see what they were talking about. And she just heard them saying, 'Yeah, um, so it's passed, um,' so they were calling the border to see if the train that I was sitting on was still there to hold me up. And we got through. And now guess who turned me in. My own sister! The older one. The younger one emigrated about a year after me, in 1969. She came to me, she's still there in Germany."

  • "The landlady who lived downstairs at the entrance came running in and said, 'Mrs. Chabrova, Mrs. Chabrova! The Americans have been asking for you, and they're armed!' My mother [was] terrified, and my father was too. And mother said to him: 'Well, you see! Again because of your business!' So Dad hid in the closet because he thought, 'They won't look for me there.' So he hid behind his clothes in the closet. Well, that's when the Americans came in. Actually, two of them had rifles and one of them didn't. The one without the rifle says to my mother, 'Are you Součková?' In Czech. And my mother says, 'No, I'm Chabrova, but I'm born Součková.' And he says, 'I'm Bohus Souček from Chicago!' And my mother knew she had relatives there. So they said hello, big hello. Mother invited them in, and he - his name was Bohumil, Bohusek, he was a teacher in Chicago - he said, 'And where's your husband?' So mother called and dad was in the closet. He didn't know what was going on, so he didn't want to come out of the closet. So then they pulled him out with the help of the Americans."

  • "And [Dad] said he was scared because he was a terrible Nazi. That once he came - this was a couple of years before the war, when nationalism was on the rise even here in the Sudetenland - he was chased off the pitch, that he wouldn't play football anymore, that it would be a purely German manifesto. They were three brothers. But he was very polite and told him what he was doing there, he told him, 'Are you a partisan?' And Dad said, 'No, I'm not, but we're guarding the bridge here, to see if it's mined.' And he said, 'Is it mined?' Dad said, 'No, it's not.' He quickly asked about his wife, a certain Hilda, and dad said: 'Well, I don't know. She still lives in the village, but I've already moved to Pilsen.' Dad asked about his brothers. One of them had been burned in a tank in Kharkov and the other one was missing. He called him Willy again, [that was] the name of the commander. Well, and he said, 'Come on.' They got into the KDF, into the jeep. Dad still said that the driver refused to go over the bridge, so Willy got behind the wheel. They crossed the bridge with Dad and [brother-in-law], and that was like they wanted to make sure that the bridge wasn't undermined."

  • "Just before the end of the war - the Americans were already here in Pilsen - my mother, my sister and I were in Podmokly with her parents. My father came to visit us or to pick us up, I don't remember, and some brave patriots said to my father: 'Franta, join us, the partisans!' A few days before the end of the war... And they sent him and my mother's brother, or his brother-in-law, to guard the bridge over the Berounka River. And if the Germans hadn't mined it. Schörner's army was retreating there by the Berounka, heavily armed. They [the soldiers] were not going to surrender and wanted to be taken prisoner by the Americans. My father was lying there in the meadow with my brother-in-law, guarding the bridge, when somebody kicked my father in the ... I'll tell it like he told me: 'Somebody kicked my ass all of a sudden.' So he turned around and there were two Germans standing over them with rifles, so right away: 'Hände hoch!' And they led them down to the river where they were already standing with the cars. This was the vanguard, who was just wondering also if the bridge had been mined again by the partisans, if they could cross it. My father, because he grew up in the Sudetenland, naturally spoke perfect German. Actually, it wasn't German, it was Egerlandisch, as it was spoken in the Sudetenland. And as they stood there, he listened to what they were saying. And they said they were waiting for the commander to come. Well, a commander came and they stood there with their hands raised. And all of a sudden the commander that came says to my dad, 'Bist du das Francl?' And my dad looks at him and [says], 'Ja!' And he was his friend from the village..."

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After emigrating, I experienced how people help refugees. That‘s why, as a volunteer of the Order of St. Lazarus, I liked to help the sick

On the way across the lake in Togo
On the way across the lake in Togo
zdroj: Archive of a witness

Václav Chabr was born on 13 July 1943 in Radobyčice near Pilsen. His father František Chabr came from Plzeň, worked in Škoda factory, was a scout and a tramp. His mother Marie Chabrová, née Součková came from Podmokel, and came to Pilsen during the Heydrichiad. The family experienced the bombing of the Škoda factory, and father found them covered in rubble. One of the liberating soldiers in Pilsen was mother‘s relative Bohumil Souček from Chicago. Václav Chabr graduated from the Julius Fucik Real Gymnasium in Pilsen. From 1956 he was a member of the Oregon tramp settlement. His father, who was a member of the Communist Party, told him about tramping and scouting. He had no ideological influence on his son, unlike his anti-communist friends. Václav Chabr graduated from an industrial engineering school, and in his first year he made his first unsuccessful attempt to escape to the West. A second unsuccessful attempt at emigration followed around 1960. He was sentenced to 16 months‘ imprisonment without parole for illegal residence abroad. The trial took place in Spišská Sobota. After the amnesty his sentence was changed to a suspended one. After completing his compulsory military service in Kežmarok, Slovakia, in 1964, he continued to work at Škoda as a married man. On 8 May 1968 he finally emigrated successfully to Germany. His wife and son did not come to see him, her parents talked her out of it, and she died soon afterwards. In Germany he graduated from university, founded a company and married for the second time. With his wife, also an emigrant, he raised a daughter and a son. As a volunteer member of the Order of St. Lazarus, he provided aid for leprosy patients in Africa. In 1990, after 22 years, he returned to his native country. He married for the third time to Svetluša Tomšovicová, who worked as a nurse. From 1992 he ran the St. Moritz guesthouse in Železná Ruda, published the Železná Ruda Newsletter, and was chairman of the Železná Ruda Club. He began to devote himself fully to professional photography. At the time of filming (2023) he lived with his wife in Železná Ruda.