Jindřich Novotný

* 1940

  • "We were actually settling the German borderlands. My mother used to say, when she talked to my father, that no one would get her to that German Broumov, but eventually she went there. She said that the Sokols from Velké Poříčí came to Broumov to support the actions of the Czechs who were in Broumov during the First Republic. So, for example, she said that the Czech gendarmes at Pasy didn't want to let them into Broumov. In 1933, there was a strike of textile workers in Broumov, so somehow we kept up with the Czechs, and the Germans, when it came to improving the living conditions of those textile workers, so the textile workers from Hronov and Poříčí went to support their own, and it was interesting how the policemen prevented the Czechs from helping in that strike."

  • "Veba even had an amazing sound at that time, they were the so-called strikers. Some of the spinners worked very fast and in large numbers, and they also had bigger payouts. They were written about in the newspapers and so on, in short it was the so-called strike movement. One of these well-known strikers was Emilie Šulcová or Anna Vacková, she was the best ever. She had about fifty looms, with the participation of other women co-workers. In short, Veba's strike movement was a model for other co-workers. Sometimes Zdeněk Nejedlý, the Minister of Education, appeared in Veba, so that Veba was - Veba cotton mills - Broumov, Zdeněk Nejedlý's mills."

  • "I remember them running on the road, the Germans were running from the Russian army from Germany, there from abroad, as if from today's Poland. Well, I remember that they also drove such poor people, and they were probably prisoners from concentration camps and labour camps that were in Germany, so it was also so sad. And the fact is that our people were again so kind that they gave them to the poor people who were driven, I remember who had anything to eat, that they were given something to eat. The guards who led them, the poor people, they more or less even tolerated it, they didn't have it anymore... They already knew that it would be bad for them, so they didn't even prevent it. And I was looking at this from the window, for example."

  • "And then came the year 1945, the great powers decided that all the Germans, the fascists, who were guilty in various ways, those would be deported to Germany. There were trains here at our station, guards from Prague also arrived, they were the so-called RG, the Red Guards were called that, and they were guarding them. From the city, they took German residents to the abandoned camp of former French prisoners and concentrated them there. And after a while they always took a certain transport to the train at the station and from there the transports went from Broumov to Germany. I remember that we were like little boys, when I wasn't going to school yet, so we went there to the field and looked towards the camp, I don't know why we went there."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Broumov

    (audio)
    délka: 01:28:48
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Velké Poříčí, 18.07.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:07:46
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I didn‘t hate the Germans.

Jindřich Novotný during the interview in July 2023
Jindřich Novotný during the interview in July 2023
zdroj: Post Bellum / Michal Homola

Jindřich Novotný was born on 22 June 1940 in Velké Poříčí near Hronov. His father worked in a textile factory in Malé Poříčí and during the Second World War he was forcibly deployed in the then German Reich. He remembers the liberation by the Soviet army in 1945 and the fighting on the border in nearby Běloves near Náchod on 9 May 1945. Before that, he also saw impoverished prisoners being led by soldiers, probably from a concentration camp in what is now Polish territory. In 1945, he moved with his parents to Broumov, where his father took a job as foreman in a spinning mill, where mostly Germans had previously worked. In September 1946, he went to the boys‘ municipal school and then to the so-called eleven-year school. After that he graduated from a two-year higher pedagogical school in Prague, with a degree in history, civics and geography. He started teaching in Police nad Metují, and after the war he started teaching at the school he himself attended. In November 1959, he enlisted in the army in Janovice nad Úhlavou and served on the western border, experiencing increased combat readiness during the so-called Cuban and Berlin crises. He survived the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968 in Broumov, where cargo planes with military equipment flew over and Polish soldiers drove tanks towards Náchod. Until his retirement he taught at the primary school in Broumov, where he still lives. He and his wife raised three sons. In 1996 he had a heart attack in the street and his life was saved by a random passer-by. Since 1999 he has been involved in writing the Broumov Chronicle. In July 2023 he was living in a home for the elderly in Broumov.