Antonín Ondroušek

* 1922

  • "He was allowed to sit or lie down in the prison, well and we had the benefit, us cooks, that we didn't work like the other prisoners. We had to for example get up at two o'clock, so that the rohlíks could be baked before that eleven o'clock of the next day. Because they were taking forms there... there were several of them... there were several also of these, there several, and so we cooked and there there were the forms with the numbers of where how many are needed for how many there. And so we put it all together, before those eleven o'clock it had to all be finished. Exactly at eleven o'clock the kitchen head chef Procházka from Prostějov made us form up in a line, us seven, the doors were opened, the guard came in, escorted the director, Horák he was called, look at that, I can remember that exactly, Horák he was called, was escorted. There was a table there, two plates were there, and a book. He tasted, the commander, that Horák, tasted the soup, tasted the other food, took the book, wrote in it - only then could we start to give out the food."

  • "Well and they were giving me a check-up all chill: hey, where are you from, what are you here for, how long are you here and everything and three, four of them were interrogating me and two of them were preparing for my butt here..., a chair, a bowl of water. When they finished interrogating me, they said: 'Well, and now you can sit down.' Well, and I sat down and into a bowl of water. (laughter) You know, these are such interesting things, that I experienced. I don't know if others experienced different ones."

  • "The warden of that prison says: 'I have one here,' I heard that he had his doors open, 'and they brought me yet another one.' That was me, I knew that. And so they brought us out, us two, before that commander, and I found this out later, that it was Horák, the commander of this. And he is telling, that commander to me: 'And what are you locked up for?' - 'How we said, we had a farm, they took it, we did not want to join the co-operative, and well they locked us up and that's it, and so we are here.' And he says, literally: 'Tie the vagabonds up and chase, so that you'll get to Klobouk to the station to catch the train. Tie the vagabonds up and chase!' And so us two vagabonds, I don't know to this day, who the other one was, here with the right hand and his he tied us u and chased us from Valašský Klobouk across Klobouk and those, who had snitched on us, that we were now here, well we were meeting them."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Brumov-Bylnice, 09.09.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:46:13
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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    Brumov-Bylnice, 14.09.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:13:20
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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Tie those vagabonds up and chase!

Antonín Ondroušek, probably in the sixties
Antonín Ondroušek, probably in the sixties
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Antonín Ondroušek was born on the 16th of April 1922 in Kanice near Brno to the family of Antonín and Růžena Ondroušek. He spent his childhood and early adolescence in Slovakia in Veľký Harčáš, near Komárna. During the second world war his father bought a large estate in Brumov in the White Carpathians. In the year 1951 the witness, his father and also his brother Alois were sentenced to punishments of multiple months, because they had resisted entering a unified agricultural co-operative. Antonín spent two months in a jail in Uherské Hradiště. His father served four months in Iľava, the witness‘s brother Alois spent the same amount of time in Handlow. Antonín served the rest of his half-year sentence in the uranium work camp near Horní Slavkov. During his time serving his sentence his wife remained in Bylnice without any means to live off of and with a young son and newborn baby. A few days after Antonín‘s return home the young family had to leave the house. The village offered them two unsuitable rents and threatened, that if they were to refuse the third, they would have to move out to the meadow by the river. They finally found asylum with their family in Slovakia - they returned to Veľký Harčáš. The witness‘s sentence was motivated by wanting to destroy the largest farmer in the village but it was not a stigma in Slovakia. Antonín, as an independent, was employed at the District National Committee in Komárna and became a valued agricultural technician. In the second half of the 50s he moved back to Bylnice with his family and continued in his work. Helping themselves, he built a house with his wife, in which this recording took place in the year 2022.