Oldřich Stergelis

* 1957

  • "It was already a border zone, where we were supposed to check the IDs and driver's licenses of people who were passing or driving by and write it down. Of course we did that. However, as time went on, we knew the people personally, we knew they were from the village, and we just waved. They always leaned a bit out of the car for us to see them properly and we let them go. Well, I was on duty one day and I was supposed to be on shore duty, but I wasn't. I changed my patrol schedule. As a commander I could do that. Because I had a newbie on my crew who was always sleeping at night shift, so I took the night shift for him and he took the day shift for me. Well, what happened was, some 16-year-old kid came by dressed like a tramp. My new guy was a tramp too, so he didn't check him out and just said, 'Hey, buddy,' and let him go. But then there was the river Ipel, which flowed into the Danube, and he was detained there by the state border guard. And they found a gun and 96 bullets on him. So, of course, they detained him, he went for interrogation. He said that he wanted to escape to America. I don't know what route he had planned, I think it's bullshit, but what was important was that they asked him if he would use the gun, and he said that he would. He had it ready and he was waiting to see what the soldier would do. And the soldier said 'hey, buddy'. But if I had been standing there, I would have definitely checked him. Then I don't know what would have happened. Who would have been faster, him or me? But it was the kind of situation where you're like, 'Damn, I could have died there,' because of one stupid 16-year-old kid."

  • "A very unpleasant part of my job was when we had to pull out drowned men. That was really unpleasant. The river police weren't working there, it was just us. So usually one of us saw a drowned person floating there and made a report. A boat would come out, they'd have to basically tie the person to a rope and tow them away. Because you couldn't land a boat just anywhere. Some places were rocky shores, they couldn't land there, because it would destroy the boat. So they had to drag the drowned person maybe two or three kilometres further, where there was a sandy shore. And there they pulled out the poor man. Then the police came and took care of the rest. But the worst part was ours. I never pulled out a drowned man with my crew, but I was there once when I was coming back from duty, and there he was lying on the shore, a Soviet army soldier who had escaped from Hungary. They had a garrison on the other side in Hungary and he tried to swim across. I said, 'I can't imagine swimming across the Danube.' And he didn't succeed either. It was terrible, a truly horrible sight because the guy had been underwater for 14 days. He looked terrible."

  • "We got a call from the squad that a boat, a speed boat, was approaching us. And that it didn't respond to the patrols' commands, it didn't want to stop, and that it needed to be stopped at all costs. All right, at all costs. The young guy I had there, he picked up his machine gun. I said to him, 'Put it down, you idiot! You gotta realize one thing. That boat's not going upstream to Austria, it's going downstream. And the next station is Hungary. Who on earth would want to run to Hungary?' Anyway, I called to ask if it was at all costs, and they said it was. And I said I knew how to do it in other way. I waited for him to drive him ashore between the dams, he would crash and then we'd pull him out. But he tricked us. He turned onto the pontoon in Štúrovo, he jumped off, ran away, and before my helmsman could catch him, the police had caught him. But then it turned out he was some guy who got a call that his mother was dying. Well, he just drove and drove and didn't react to anything. So he got a fine and that was all. That was the only time they told me. Well, they didn't tell me to shoot, they said, 'At all costs.' And they left it up to me as the boat captain to sort it out. So I figured it out the way I did. And it was a reasonable solution. Because it is nonsense to shoot at somebody

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    Zlín, 10.03.2022

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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They called us sailors. A submachine gun was to us what a mobile is today.

Oldřich Stergelis in 2022
Oldřich Stergelis in 2022
zdroj: Post Bellum

Oldřich Stergelis was born on 12 January 1957 in Kojetín. He grew up in Tovačov, his mother Vlasta worked as a nurse, his father Gerasimos as a salesman. His grandfather František Bíbr fought in the First World War, uncle Oldřich Bíbr was fully deployed during the Second World War. After primary school in Tovačov, Oldřich trained as a machine fitter in Přerov and then worked in the Přerov Machine Works - Assembly. From 1976 to 1978 he served in the Danube Border Guard, first in Medvědov and later, after graduating from the non-commissioned officer school, in Komárno. During his service he witnessed unsuccessful attempts to emigration, illegal smuggling of goods and pulling of drowned people out of the Danube. After leaving for civilian life, he returned to Přerov Machine Works - Assembly, where he worked until the Velvet Revolution. After 1989, he became self-emloyed. In 2022 Oldřich Stergelis lived in Chropyně.