“A short man with two policemen came in a moment and they took us away. They took us - and that was the first time a I got to know how the building of National Security Corps here in Komenská Street looked from the inside. The took us there by car so that we would not run away during the way and they started to question us: how we meant it and so on. We told them, well how we meant it... So, they hammered into us that it was stupid. That he had committed a suicide, had jumped out of the window and that it was it. So, they gave us a lesson...” - “Just orally?” - “No.... (he is laughing) but it did not hurt. We got a few slaps and we went away... They did not beat us... We really got a few slaps and we went away... I thought that it was over. But I got a notice in a fortnight saying that they had expelled me from school as I did not have political prerequisites to successfully finish my studies. And that because of it they expelled me and moreover did not recommend me for studying at another vocational school. So, I was screwed. When my dad saw it, he only said that they were bastards, he found me a job and I started an apprenticeship in the Optikotechna company.”
“And as the main part of fighters flew over, we were saying: ‘They will wail that the danger has passed in a while and we will go home.‘ But suddenly a horrible roar could be heard. Out of nowhere, horrible rumble and noise could be heard from the left, from the direction of Kozlovice and the hospital. We looked in that direction and four or six huge four-engine bombers were flying from that direction. And they were flying directly towards us - [me], Břéťa Klíma and Tomáš Říčánek. And grandma was standing at the door because the rumble could already be heard. And as we heard and saw them, we immediately headed home. I said that I was lucky. The doors of the basement closed and explosions and shots began. A bomb fell opposite to us next to Hrazdil´s house and next to Mr. Běhal´s blacksmith's workshop. The bomb exploded at Hrazdil´s and then it started to fall down. Trávník, Kozlovská Street and down there. Koliby at the pond and it all fell down.
“It was not a planned bombing of Přerov but an alternative one. But it was not a planned alternative bombing because they wanted to drop bombs on the station. It was a big railway junction. A lot of German trains and a lot of German soldiers changed there. Or on the Optikotechna company where gun sights and rifle scopes were made. But it happened like this. The Germans pulled an internationally forbidden trick and that was that when the emergency was announced, the Germans - and the young men, Lojza Derka and the whole gang who spread it - they unfolded red crosses on the roof. The hospital had a red cross and Optika as well. So, they wanted to drop bombs [on the Optikotechna company] but they saw red crosses there so they dropped them elsewhere. They dropped them a little bit lower and it fell around the Bečva river on [the village of] Vsacko. So, it was, we cannot say a mistake, but they did not want to drop it because there were two signs of hospitals and they, the navigators did not have it in their plans.”
“We did not see them, we only heard a machine gun shooting over Přerov, Vinary and Troubky... And we saw pieces of aircraft or parachutes. We saw something falling from the clouds. That is what we saw. Then they wailed the end, everything fell down somewhere and we then discovered what had fallen where. I took my grandmother´s bicycle and Břéťa Klíma had a bicycle, Fanda Ošťádal... We all took our bikes and rode them at first on the hill to Vinary where a shot down American fighter pilot was on a Lightning. Those were the two-body armed reconnaissance planes. It was shot down there. We reached the place by bikes. We saw that he had already got off the plane and that the Germans were escorting him on the way. He was giving them cigarettes, they were talking and smoking. We saw him and it was OK - we went to the village of Troubky by bike. The main fighters fell down there. It was huge there, the majority of them died but four of them survived. Two were hurt and the Germans captured them and took them to hospital. And that Tom Qalman and [Edmund] Kasold, the two of them escaped from the Germans and fled to Hostýnské hills.”
Jaroslav Schön was born on the 22nd of June 1932 in Přerov as the only son of the then chief of Sokol Přerov Jaroslav and an accountant Jarmila. He grew up in Zlín during the Second World War. There, he started to attend a scout unit as a cub scout and studied at elementary school. However, he experienced bombing during the war in Přerov with his grandmother whom he came to visit during the time of coal vacation. He also experienced the 17th of December 1944 when an air battle took place over Přerov. He spent the liberation in Zlín for change. He studied at the School of Foreign Languages under the Business Academy in Přerov with focus on the English language. He was expelled from the school because of his appearance in the Congress of the Czech Union of Youth (SČM) in Přerov in March 1948 shortly after Jan Masaryk´s death where he protested against the claim that Masaryk had committed a suicide and he started an apprenticeship in the Optikotechna company. He graduated from his studies of fine mechanics and optics together with his future wife Dagmar Hanáková. Jaroslav first joined the military service in a boot camp at Boarder Guard in Železná Ruda and he later joined Dukla sports unit in Prague. He was employed by Meopta and Energoprojekt companies and he got to work as a chief designer there. He has spent major part of his life doing sports and making music - he did exercise in Sokol as an adolescent and he played the piano. He and his friends started a band after his military service (Skupina Pozemních staveb - Group of Building Constructions). He then performed in a chamber orchestra Malý KRAB (Small KRAB) with Břetislav Kramář, a bandleader of swing orchestra KRAB. He later himself became a bandleader of a Dixieland band D XL. Jaroslav has also been interested in aviation since his youth. He passed tests for glider pilot license in Otrokovice in 1949. However, he could never fly motor-powered aircraft due to the 1948 “blot” in his cadre materials. His interest in the participants of the war battle over Přerov finally resulted in a meeting of American and German pilots in Přerov in 2000 and in several other meetings in following years. Jaroslav is an author of publications Bomby na Přerov (1999) (Bombs on Přerov) and Válečné letecké dny nad Přerovskem (2014) (War Air Days over the Přerov Area) which was published on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the air battle during the World War II. He remained an active member of the Czech Airman Association in Přerov and he took part in meetings with the public and in discussions. He died on June 30th, 2023.
