Karel Mikolín

* 1924

  • "In February 1944, I was asked to report to the first platform of the Brno railway station as a member of the 1924 year. Well, there they put us on a train and we went, we didn't know where and so on. I know it was a very difficult parting with my mother, because it was during the war, abroad and at a time when it was no longer glorious with the Germans, when they were already bombed a lot. Well, so I... they took us to Erfurt, where they put us up in a broken-down theatre in the auditorium. There was a curtain, and behind the curtain it was broken, the stage, and in that auditorium, there were six hundred beds on three floors, with six hundreds of us in one room, so you can imagine what it looked like. Well, on top of that, I was working as an electrician for Feinmechanische Werke Erfurt. I had the advantage that we were there to keep the machines running. There was a workshop, electrical, well, and whoever broke a machine, his foreman would write him a note, come to the door, there was a window, put the note in, and the boss of our electrical workshop, he was an old German who had been injured at the front, so he always said who was going where. For us it was very welcomed, because in those days you could sabotage beautifully."

  • "As far as the sabotage is concerned, there was really minimal work [in forced labour]. I was employed as an electrician, that is, if a machine broke down, and in those days the machines were quite simple, they had a switch and so on, not much, some fuses. So, there was a system in place. We were in that electrical workshop, so whoever needed to repair a machine, he got a paper from his foreman, a request, came to our workshop, and the foreman was a German, also a wartime, disabled man. And it was established that, especially on night shifts, whoever didn't want to work came with the request. He loosened the fuse, the machine stopped working, he went to his foreman, who did not understand it at all, filled out a sign that they wanted repairs, and he came to us. And the typical thing was: Wie viel? That means how long he doesn't want to work. Zwei Stunden. And that was the sign that I came over to the machine, disassembled it a little bit to make it look like I was working on it, and we went to bed in the so-called kabelschachte. And two hours later I came in, tightened the fuse, and the factory went on. That was normal, typical."

  • "Especially the sixty-eighth year, because on the night of August 20-21, the army had planned an alarm drill. And it was, because it was a drill, we commanders knew about it so we could be there to check on how things were going with my unit. So, I knew that the alarm was going to go off at four o'clock. Well, now when the alarm started going off, because we had it in the apartment, it started going off at one o'clock, I said, what kind of a fool messed it up, it's not supposed to be until four o'clock in the morning. But I went to the barracks, then a car came, so it loaded me up, brought me to the barracks. At the entrance to the barracks, the unit supervisor was waiting for me and told me to come immediately to the army commander. So I went, it was across the street, the Pentagon we called it, so I went there and there I learned that we were being occupied. So, I broke out in a deadly sweat, because I had half the unit out on various exercises. I said: 'Jesus Christ, something could happen here!' So, when I heard about it there, he said, wait for the order. So I went back to the barracks, I immediately started to call those units that were out, I gave them orders not to look for conflicts, immediately to the barracks, not to make any contacts and to come as soon as possible. Inform me every half hour on the radio network how the move to the barracks was progressing. That way, I could keep track of how they were going back, and they were already in Moravia, near Karlovy Vary and so on."

  • "Well, I didn't want to stay in the army. My dream was to have a big electrical company, doing electrical work in houses and so on, that I would be a huge company. Well, they made me stay in the army. Because I was a communist, they forced me under such a threat: Either you stay in the army and you can determine your crew, or you go into civilian life and in three weeks we'll draft you and you'll be where we want you, where we need you."

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I do not think about what I cannot do anymore, instead I enjoy what I can do

Karel Mikolín, 1944
Karel Mikolín, 1944
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Karel Mikolín was born on 25 February 1924 in Brno as the first child of Karel and Terézie Mikolínová. Her mother was Czech and her father German. The Mikolín’s family first lived in a one-room apartment without electricity, and in 1936 they became caretakers in a luxurious Brno apartment building. He remembers the announcement of mobilisation in September 1938 and the arrival of German soldiers in Brno in March 1939. After the first year of the upper primary school, he entered the second year at the grammar school, and after the fourth year he went to work to the Válek company, where he trained as an electrician in 1939-1943. In February 1944 he was forced to work in a small arms factory in Erfurt. In February 1945 he was transferred to Dvůr Králové nad Labem to work for Junkers company, from where he fled home to Brno. He experienced the bombing of Brno and the liberation by the Red Army. He was involved in the reconstruction of the railway line between Brno and Blansko, and in September 1945 he entered the secondary industrial school, which he completed four years later. In 1946 he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in August 1948 he got married, he has one son. After graduation he worked in Moravskoslezské elektrotechnické závody. He completed his military service in Slovakia and remained in the army. He graduated from the military academy and worked as a commander of the signal troops in Tábor. There he also lived through the invasion in August 1968. In the seventies he was tried by a military court because of the August events, he got off with a disciplinary sentence. He retired in 1982 with the rank of colonel. In retirement, he worked in a warehouse and was also given the responsibility of creating an effective civil defence in Písek. He watched the revolution in November 1989 with suspicion, believing that it was possible to reform the system without it. Today, he watches with dismay the military invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation. He lives in Písek.