Vojtěch Klusoň

* 1949

  • “There were two barracks in Vysoké Mýto. Apparently, they didn’t have storage rooms there. One time, there was an empty cellar in the brewery, the lager cellar, so they dumped about a wagon of potatoes there. They always brought something there, stored it away, and then came for regular supply runs from the barracks. They had carrots and beetroot there as well. The soldiers would be loading and unloading it all day, and they wouldn’t give them anything to eat. They had clinker there, it was used for heating, so they’d put the potatoes into the warm clinker and then eat them. Their officer was an aggressive, arrogant sort. I personally saw him hit a soldier in the face, he would beat them up, mash them. They just stood, looked, kept quiet. They behaved horribly to them. They wore boots and toe-rags, no socks, they had an army coat with a white collar, not even a shirt. The potatoes were already rotting, and as they carried them, their uniforms got stained, it was a terrible stench of rotten potatoes. And they’d load up those rotten potatoes in their drenched uniforms and take them to Mýto. They couldn’t even take them in a different vehicle.”

  • “They would always arrive in the morning in a grey bus from Pardubice. They would lead them along the road to the theatre, with handcuffs and white armbands, and the whole theatre was full of State Security officers. Everything was closed down when we went to school and from school, they closed it behind us. When my father went to get wood for the boiler, they would escort him. They took them away again in the evening. The trial lasted about a week, there were several of them, they included women, too. You could hear from the auditorium how the people they brought there condemnded the prisoners and demanded the harshest punishment for them. They chanted ‘Convict them! Convict them!’ You could hear hateful stuff said about those people. We believed it as well, as children. People around us spoke about it. But all I saw was when they brought them in and then took them away from that public court in the main auditorium.”

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    Polička, 24.09.2020

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He witnessed show trials as a child and the wisdom of old brewmasters at the brewery

Vojtěch Klusoň in 1966
Vojtěch Klusoň in 1966
zdroj: archives of the witness

Vojtěch Klusoň was born on 9 January 1949 into the family of a tailor whose small business was forced to close by the Communist government. The family then moved to Polička in response to a classified ad, and his father took up employment as the administrator of Tyl House. As a little boy, Vojtěch witnessed the trials that took place there with political prisoners and also how his father burned prohibited books brought there by State Security. Otherwise, he grew up in a theatrical environment. He remembers the events connected to the occupation of Warsaw Pact forces in Polička – at the time, Soviet units seized the military zone in nearby Květná. Vojtěch Klusoň spent part of his own military service in the late 1960s as an employee at Průmstav (Industrial Constructions). Upon returning to Polička he found a job at the local brewery, where he remained until his retirement. He did not agree with the Communist regime, but he never opposed it actively.