Rudolf Schmidt

* 1935

  • "Our cooperative in Bílý Újezd organized such a trip to East Germany. And I signed up and went with them. We took a bus to Germany, it was here above Leipzig. I don't remember exactly the name of the village now. We visited them because they were building a new potato factory. And they were making a potato factory here too, so we went to see it. That day we took the bus up above Leipzig a little bit more, I don't remember exactly. We were listening to the radio everywhere and I was in trouble. Our Czechs had German newspapers and now they were giving me German newspapers to read and they kept pestering me and I had to translate. Well, I couldn't translate everything they said on the radio! It was a terrible mess."

  • "At that time I was looking after a little gypsy who was in jail. And a guy like that, who was in jail, he had to do nasty, ugly jobs, like in the toilets and stuff. And the man who was in the guardhouse, he had to guard that man. And I was guarding this little gypsy, and he was always hanging around near my machine gun, until he must have reached his hand in there and it went off! It was such a terrible luck that the gypsy had his legs spread and the bullet went into the ground between his spread legs. I could have been in jail if that had happened. Then I'd have had an ugly nick. I don't know, I might not even be here anymore. All sorts of bad things have happened sometimes. I had to find a cartridge in the first place. It was quiet in the barracks, a truck was passing by at the moment, so you couldn't hear the shot. So, I didn't get hurt, and neither did the gypsy. I was very lucky."

  • "Well, for example, when they transfered us to the Stříbro. In Stříbro then - it was already close to the border, and moreover the western border! So then some of these military batches, some captain came to interrogate us a little bit. That was one or two of half German nationality of us, we were about three in the squad at that time. One squad was 12 guys. That's when they came to interrogate us to see if we would run away to the West, for example. Then we found out later that one soldier had actually gotten a gun of some kind, gotten some bullets, and wanted to escape. But he was of course caught not far from the barracks."

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    Hradec Králové, 15.06.2023

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Thanks to father they were allowed to stay, the rest of the family was expelled

As a soldier, ca. 1956
As a soldier, ca. 1956
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Rudolf Schmidt was born on 15 September 1935 in Deštné v Orlických horách into a mixed Czech-German marriage. He had three sisters and spent his childhood on the family farm. Because of his origins, he attended a German school. After the war, thanks to his Czechoslovak nationality, his father managed to prove his integrity and secure an exemption for the family from the expulsion of the German population. Rudolf Schmidt joined the compulsory military service in 1956. During two years he changed several garrisons in Bohemia and Moravia. The family farm was nationalised by the communists. After the compulsory military service, he worked in the winter season at the Adamovské strojírky in Dobruška or in a joinery. In the summer he took care of cattle, which were driven by the Unified Agricultural Cooperative (JZD) to pastures in the Orlické Mountains. He married and had a daughter. In 2023 he lived in Šediviny.