"Those soldiers were poor too. They begged the women if they could wash their laundry. They went around the houses to wash some of their personal laundries. People washed it, well. They were poor when I think of it. Because there were a lot of soldiers here, a line, and they were the recruits, and my father had to sew their files. Somehow they had it here on that collar, and he was ordered to sew it on. I think it was for a crown. And I know that one soldier was here one evening. He spoke Czech because he was from the border. Mom then cried completely. He was 17 years old. He said they had taken them, that they would go to work digging trenches. He had to go. So they loaded them and took them away and began to dress them in military uniform and for war. It's as if they've been caught. That's how he interpreted it here, I remember. "-" Was he of German nationality? "-" I don't know. He spoke Czech. "
"The school was moved away and we, who were here as children, had to go to Tisema. There was a class, and now there were so many children. So we went in two shifts. In the morning and in the afternoon. We walked six kilometres and it was cold. "-" Did you walk six kilometres? Six kilometres there and six kilometres back? ”-“ On foot, yes! We went for half an hour. Before half-past six we met one by one and we went. There were definitely twelve of us like that. The smaller ones went too. They went to first-class and walked to Tisema. The bigger ones took care of them. "Didn't you rather get out of that school?" - "No, Mom sent us to school, we had to go there. But you know we didn't want to. Especially when it was cold. It was snowing, the roads were crowded. The snow wasn't ploughed away. "
"Two Germans kept coming here, they were officers, and with them Czechs. I don't know if it was the mayor. And since my father was a tailor, they wanted him to stay here. Because there was a background for them. They had around the training ground, but Neveklov, it was a resort. And so they wanted tailors, shoemakers, they persuaded various people to stay here. So we stayed in the evicted area, feeling as if we had been held captive because we weren't allowed to go anywhere. We were here for the Germans. People went to the fields ... This side of the street, it's Pražská, so that one side of the street was occupied. So the people opposite had to move here, they lived with us. And there were soldiers across the street. They lived here for the duration of the exercises and had a kitchen there in the apartment and people cooked for them in the gardens and then they went to war. They practised here, and then they went. "
Jaroslav Škarvan was born on August 20, 1932, in a Prague maternity hospital, but he lived with his parents in Neveklov, Central Bohemia, where he lives to this day. Father Jaroslav ran a tailor‘s shop here, his mother Marie took care of the household, which also included a piece of field, a meadow and small livestock. The Škarvans were among several Czech families who were not evicted from Neveklov in 1943 due to the establishment of a Waffen-SS training area. Jaroslav‘s father was employed as a tailor by the Germans in Neveklov to work in a uniform administration, and Jaroslav, whose school was cancelled in Neveklov, had to go to a school six kilometres away in the village of Tisem. That was also the reason why his mother sent him to his aunt in Modřany near Prague in 1944, where he was closer to school. He also experienced the Prague Uprising and the end of the war in Modřany. After returning to Neveklov, Soviet soldiers lived in their homes. Jaroslav describes how they robbed and threatened to shoot their mother. In 1947 he finished middle school in Neveklov, then went to Prague to study to be a tailor. In 1948, his mother died after a long illness, and he returned to Neveklov, where he completed his apprenticeship at his father‘s workshop. He wanted to sew and continue working in the clothing industry, but his plans were destroyed by the communist coup and the subsequent liquidation of the trade license. Jaroslav had no choice but to join Jawa as a grinder, where he worked until his retirement. In 1961 he married and started a family. In 1968 he witnessed the Soviet occupation in Neveklov. Jaroslav Škarvan died on January 17, 2021.
