Vladimír Včela

“I met one scout by chance in Jihlava, in 1938. There was a scout rally in a place where, today you can find the ‘House of health’; next to the Jewish cemetery. I was totally astonished by them because up until then, all I knew was boys from the apartment buildings. These guys were so different. They were amazing, beautiful, perfect to me. I stayed with them until very late that evening and I had already made up mind. I would become one of them. But first of all, I had to find them. Therefore, I was searching for scouts because I didn’t know where they existed. When I finally found them, they told me that I was still too young to become a scout. They said, I would have to wait a year. The waiting lasted until 1945.”

“The summer camp was a great experience. It was fabulous, a very unusual experience. We were playing a game and I was out of the camp. I was coming back and behind Vilánec, there’s a hill in the forest. There was a group of Soviet soldiers. It was just after the war, so it was quite normal to spot groups of Russian soldiers. They were slaughtering a cow there. They killed it and they had a field kitchen, right next to it. They were just starting to cut it up when I was walking past. I had never seen a dead cow before. One of the soldiers gave me a piece of meat and said, ‘here you are’. I brought it into the camp and of course it was a great feat because in those times food was very scarce and meat even more so.”