Zdeněk Švéda

* 1934

  • “The Gestapo came and my grandfather was working on the wood behind the house. Štěpán (Macek) was home and ran from the Gestapo back into the forest. By the end of the war Josef Joklík ran away from work in Most and was hiding in the attic in our home. I was ten, digging up potatoes in the garden and the Gestapo came to interrogate me. I knew that Josef Joklík was hiding there. But I told them that he was working in Most. I said it really loudly so that Josef would hear that I wasn't going to give him away.”

  • “Štěpán Macek had a bunker at Olšanský, where the creek flows through the Valouch family land, and another one here in the forest. I admired his wife, Anna Macková, née Joklíková, that she would always bring him food at night. There was someone named Lamberger in Olšany and he was the head of the economic or transport department. He used to go hunting, where the Rozsocha hill is, and he would only get going if everything was quiet to let the partisans know that they could get moving. And when he didn't go there they would know that nothing was happening. Czechs were bastards. For instance, there was this policeman in Olšany, a Czech person went to him with compromising information about someone, and he just swept it under the rug.”

  • “There were three storms on the 12th of May. One in the afternoon, one at eight in the evening, and the third one at half past ten at night. And that was the first time it hit our house. You wouldn't believe it, a house twenty metres long and it was all on fire. My uncle Josef was in Bušín, and the only people who stayed at home were my uncle František, my grandfather Josef, my mother, and I. They woke me up and told me to run to our neighbours, the Macek family. In that blaze you could't tell anymore what was actually on fire. Štěpán Macek then ran to the stable and managed to only let out one cow with a calf, that was all he could do. My granddad saved some duvets and threw some drawers into the cellar. When I got back from the Macek household it was not possible to go inside the house anymore. Everything was burning. I saw it myself how it got struck by another lightning. Like pouring oil into a fire. I was there with no shoes, dressed only in shorts and a shirt. The next day the Rýznar boys dressed me up.”

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    Horní Studénky, 15.08.2017

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In the village of Na Horách

Zdeněk Švéda
Zdeněk Švéda
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Zdeněk Švéda was born on the 24th of July 1934 in Šumperk. His mother had to be taken fourteen kilometres to the hospital by a horse carriage from a village called Na Horách which falls under the town of Olšany. He spent his early years in the village and today he is the oldest living native-born citizen of the community. Nobody currently resides there but only half a century ago the village was vibrant with life. Zdeněk Švéda remembers all the joys and sorrows of local residents, as well as the war period during which the village belonged to the Reich‘s Sudetenland district (German: Reichsgau Sudetenland). Several people hid there from the Gestapo and partisans were known to stay in the nearby forests. This led to several checks from Gestapo officers. The family lost all their property following a fire caused by a lightning strike in 1948 and had to rebuild their entire estate. In 1960 Zdeněk Švéda married and moved to Horní Studénky. He worked as a driver for the ČSAD company for many years until he retired. In 2017 he and his wife Marie still lived in Horní Studénky.