Zdenek Havránek

* 1954

  • "I was in Liščí Žleb. That's opposite Vlaské, in the Velká Morava direction; there's an underpass under the tracks, and there was an old reeve's house. I used to go there to catch martens. I was always exploring around after the war. These days, everybody has metal detectors, but I was just looking for clues, like the chapel... There was an old barn, and under the barn there was a threshing floor where the wagons used to go. There were wagons and plows packed in there. I went in there and thought something might be buried there. I pulled one wagon out and tapped the floor in the back with a stick, and it sounded hollow. I rode my bike home and I dug and dug, and although I never got to finish it, I knew there was something there. I got there about a fortnight later, and all that was left was a two by two metre box, a one metre high Werwolf crate full of Wehrmacht stamps, a swastika and an eagle."

  • "I've had problems with guns. My friends and I found crates at the Václavek Farm in Velvíz, and those had belonged to the Werwolf. There was a crate of weapons... grenades, garrote wires... I took a light machine gun, a Mauser rifle, some sabres and some ammo. We used to have an old steamer behind the house to boil potatoes. I set it up at the forest edge, set the machine gun up, put the belt in, lay down and shot it. It 'jumped' and I was happy I had hit it. A man named Šafr, a policeman, was driving down the road, heard the shots and came over while I was still shooting. He asked me what it was. I hid the machine gun right away, but it was hot and I burned my hand. He went to my dad, they knew each other. He said, 'Hey, Vašek, what's your boy doing?' Dad said, 'What's he doing?' He said, 'Why does he shoot?' 'Why, he's got nothing to shoot?' I had pistols under my pillow. Šafr said, 'I a the machine gun. Tell your son to show you his hand. He must have got a burn.' I did have a burn for sure. So I took the machine gun, the rifles and the sabres and brought them to the gendarmerie station. But I kept the pistols and two jars of bullets. The next day I went somewhere, my mother was fixing my bed and she found it. She took it and threw it into the Morava River."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Hanušovice, 30.08.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:02:55
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Hanušovice, 13.09.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 23:17
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Hidden weapons of the Werwolf

Zdeněk Havránek
Zdeněk Havránek
zdroj: Witness's archive

Zdeněk Havránek was born on 8 June 1954 into a mixed nationality marriage. His mother Terezie Rauer was German and father Václav Havránek was Czech. During World War II, his father was deployed by the Todt organisation to build motorways around Stuttgart. He managed to escape while the Allies bombed the city and made his way to Hanušovice (Hannsdorf) where he immediately found a job as a trained butcher with a perfect command of German. Still during the war, he married Terezie Rauer, the mother of the witness. They had five children between 1944 and 1954, of whom Zdeněk Havránek was the youngest. He trained as a bricklayer. During his apprenticeship he suffered a serious eye injury, which took him out of the military register so he did not have to do the basic military service. He made his living as a fire clay worker at the Komořany power plant and a bricklayer all over the country. Among other things, he worked in the Most region during the demolition of Prunéřov and the old town of Most which had to give way to lignite mining. When his parents passed, he returned to Hanušovice where he worked with the forest management authority until retirement, first as a labourer and then a bricklayer at the service centre. He spent his subsequent life in the forests. He saw many secluded places around Hanušovice. In remote settlements, saw abandoned buildings, in which he found, among other things, hidden Werwolf guerrillas‘ supplies from wartime. At the time of filming in 2023, he and his wife Dagmar were still living in their house close to the forest on the outskirts of Hanušovice.