Bohuslav Douša

* 1942

  • "It was in the afternoon. I had a garage right next door, so I went there to fetch some tools. I saw the star, so I said to myself, I'll take it, the star, it won't be here anymore. It was over three meters large. The red star, which always shone at night when there were liberation anniversaries or holidays, shone on top of the bridge. The bridge is beautifully wide, like this table, and it has rivets. It was possible to run upstairs. I was young, 25 years old. (…) It was during the day, hundreds, thousands of people standing on both sides. I took the tools, there was some acquaintance of mine, we climbed up. Downstairs were cars with those soldiers. If someone looked up there and did "bang, bang", he would shoot us down like pigeons. It was such a euphoria, anger. (…) That's what I thought, I won't be here. (…) We cut the screws, then knocked into it, rocked and it slowly started to fall apart. It floated upstream for a while, then it went to the bottom. Maybe it's still corroded somewhere, or it floated to Germany."

  • "I did sports, I was in Pioneer and in the youth union. I became very involved in sports. I played handball, I played hockey, the second league for the Ústí chemist, I got involved in the ski team. When I was 25, I wrote a letter that I was finishing [in the youth union]. There were efforts to get me into the party, which I refused. I remember it was a Mr Marek, the chairman of a local cell, who caught me in a chemical plant and said, 'Comrade Douša, how did you decide? Should we count on you? ' I say that if they give me a triple salary, I'll be there tomorrow. That's what my dad told me - have financial requirements, they'll see you're on the money, so they'll let you go. And I have to be grateful to Dad for giving me such advice. I have never been involved in politics. "

  • "Good afternoon, my name is Douša Bohuslav. I was born on October 4, 1942 in Pelhřimov, where we lived until the end of the war. After transferring my father to Prague and the birth of my sister, we lived in Ústí nad Labem from 1947. I went to school there, studied industrial engineering, where I lived until 1968 when the Warsaw Pact Troops invaded Czechoslovakia. I got together with my girlfriend and emigrated to Germany so that I could be close to my parents if something was to go wrong. I emigrated in good faith, believing it is not for a long time, but a purely temporary affair, only a few months or a year, after the invasion of troops.... but the opposite was true. It's been over twenty years. "

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    Černolice, 01.11.2018

    (audio)
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That red star has to go down!

Bohuslav Douša, 1960s
Bohuslav Douša, 1960s
zdroj: archív pamětníka

Bohuslav Douša was born on October 4, 1942, in Pelhřimov, after the war, his parents moved to Ústí nad Labem, where he grew up in 1946. After primary school he trained as a mechanic in chemical equipment, then he continued in his training and education at the Secondary Industrial School of Chemistry in Ústí nad Labem. In his youth, he played a lot of sports, handball and hockey. On August 21, 1968, he lived in Ústí nad Labem. After the occupation in August 1968, he emigrated to Stuttgart, West Germany, where he worked first as a bottling controller, later as a technician in a brewery and wine cellar. From 1976 to 1985 he worked in the Canary Islands as a receptionist and construction supervisor. Later, from 1986 to 1990, he ran a restaurant. After 1990 he returned to Czechoslovakia. During the Olympics in Barcelona in 1992, he worked as a delegate for a Czech travel agency. He later ran a small hotel with his Czech wife. In 2004, he decided to return to the Czech Republic for good. Since 2009 he has lived in Černolice south of Prague.