We arranged that we actually received the teletext messages from Vojkov, or sorry, from Tehov, on a daily basis. And because there were friends who went to Prague to work every day, right, so we gave them the news and they always handed it over at the Mladá fronta editorial office in the morning, which was in Panská Street then, right, so they had it on the way, because they worked right there, in the Children's House there was the office of energy then. So basically we were supplying Mladá fronta with that foreign teletext information every day, yeah. Which would have been hard to get hold of otherwise. Because, as I say, all the telecommunications, it was all blocked and busy. Well, so in a way, we were sort of involved in the information activities at that time as well.
Just when we were there at the camp during the holidays, it was the last date when all the Germans had to move out. And they were only allowed to take some things with them, which they basically carried on a cart, cattle and all other things they had to leave behind. And so they had to leave by midnight, right. So now that the whole village was deserted, now we started to hear the cows mooing with thirst and hunger because they were just left there like that. So we, as far as possible, like, at least gave them, we poured water in there.
The big armored car stopped in front of Grandma's house and the crew asked Grandma if they could spend the night there. So Grandma said yes, of course. And because I was sleeping at her house at that time, right, so what happened was that I and about ten Red Army soldiers fell asleep in that grandmother's bedroom. So that first day after the liberation I slept with ten Red Army men.
Jaroslav Svoboda was born on 31 March 1938 in Říčany near Prague, where he lived his whole life. He doesn‘t remember much about the war, but he has a distinct memory of the days of liberation, when he spent a night in one room with Soviet soldiers at his grandmother‘s house. In 1946, he went to a Sokol summer camp in the border region in Šumava, where he experienced the displacement of the original German-speaking inhabitants. Already as a schoolboy he joined an amateur radio club, which predetermined his professional career. He graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University, where he also worked until recently. In 1968, thanks to his skills, he helped to transmit teletext messages from the transmitter in Tehov to the editorial office of Mladá fronta newspaper. In the late 1960s, he and his wife built a house. He died on July 12, 2024.
