“There were two fugitive Jews from a concentration camp hidden in a mine in Frenštát. One German refugee and two other people. The owner of the mine was hiding them there. There was no food, no medicine, no money, so there was a group of people. I think that the group included my dad, the policemen from Frenštát and Mr. Skřivánek, who owned a bus transport company that was carrying people from Frenštát to Kopřivnice. And Kopřivnice was already a part of the German Reich. So people would help as best as they could. Doctor Kratschmer was supplying the medicines. One Austrian soldier was also involved in this. He later shot himself because the Germans were after him; he had somehow given himself away. He shot himself in our house. But it was no organization, we were just helping out. We knew that they were there so we would bring them some clothes for the winter and various other stuff.”
“The regional national committee. Commission Nr. 16 for assignment of persons to forced-labor camps in Ostrava. Submission number and so on. Ostrava, February 6, 1950. Term: ‘Konvička Eduard is being sentenced to one year’. And here are the reasons: ‘as was revealed by an administrative inquiry, you haven’t been employed’ – because they didn’t want to employ him as a former wholesale merchant. ‘Neither are you trying to find a job. By your behavior you’re threatening the first national five-year economic plan. For the above-mentioned reasons you are in need of re-education’. He had 15 days to appeal against this ruling, but this was on February 6th and on February 20th he was already filing the appeal in prison. And because he filed an appeal they gave him two extra years. After he came back, they sent him a letter requesting him to cover the cost of his stay in the forced-labor camp in Brno (TNP Brno). So basically he had to pay for it.”
“We were going on boats down the Hron river. We were close to the Sašovské Podhradie, it’s before Žiar nad Hronom. It was a very hot day and the boys talked me into doing a ‘Hawaii’ – that’s when you connect the boats and let them float freely downstream. However there were rapids approaching and, what was even worse, a herd of cows was crossing the river just ahead of us. There must have been at least 200 cows in the water. That was the first time I saw a cow from underneath. Three boats got crushed by the cows. Some of the boys suffered bruises, but one unfortunately had a broken collarbone. We took him to the local doctor in Žiaru nad Hronom – it used to be called Sväty Križ nad Hronom. I went to the police station to sign a form on the incident and the injury. They asked me what happened. I said that the boy had a broken collarbone. They asked me how it happened. I said that it was from a cow that kicked him on a boat in the Hron river. They said: ‘are you drunk?’. They wouldn’t believe me.”
“Our boss thought that one expiated sinner is better than 100 faithful party members and handed me the application for party membership. He asked me what I thought about it. I was actually very rude to him. I told him to roll up that piece of paper and to stick it in his buttocks. He somehow couldn’t grasp it and asked me to repeat it. So I told him to push it in with the thin end first. This decided my future and they kicked me out of school. Since then I worked in a variety of professions until 1990. So we didn’t have an easy life.”
“When we asked about my father’s rehabilitation in 1968, we received the following answer: ‘your claim for a civic rehabilitation cannot be accommodated since a legal decision on your trial and imprisonment is missing. Yours faithfully, long live peace’. The signature was unreadable. So, as he hadn’t been sentenced, he wasn’t imprisoned.”
Eduard Konvička - Pajtáš was born on December 25, 1937 in Orlová-Lazy. In 1944, his father was arrested for participating in the resistance movement. After the war, on May 15, 1945, Eduard joined a Scout troop in Frenštát pod Radhoštěm. In August of the same year, he moved to Těšín, where he joined the 2nd troop. In September 1949 the situation became untenable and, therefore, the troop terminated its activities. After the ban, they continued their activities for a number of years forming the St. George group, that included a couple of former members of the 2nd troop. In 1950, his father was sent for re-education in the TNP. When the Scout was restored again Eduard became the leader of the 2nd troop in Český Těšín. After the Scout was banned again, he and Josef Žižka founded a canoeing club that was in fact an illegal Scout canoeing troop. In 1992, he became the leader of the Scout organization in Český Těšín. Pajtáš took part in two Jamborees, in 1995 in Holland and in 2011 in Sweden. He has also worked as an instructor of a forest school in Beskydy and got involved in organizing the Wolfram event with a tradition since 2006. Since 2010 he‘s been the advisor of the Silesian organization of Svojsík‘s troop Petr Bezruč patrol. From 1998 to 2002, he was a member of the municipal board of the city of Český Těšín. His wife died in 1994. He has a son and a daughter. Still today he regularly attends the summer camp of his troop. The list of summer camps that he took part in is extensive. In 1969 he got sacked from a vocational school, where he used to teach professional classes, for refusing to join the Communist party. Thereafter he worked as a mechanic.
