“I recall an interesting incident that happened at our lodge: my father was summoned to a meeting in Klatovy. He set out early in the morning at quarter to five by bus to Srní. It was, I think, in the autumn of 1945. As soon as he had left – while we were still asleep – someone knocked on the front porch window. So my mom went out and there were about six or eight ragged men, some of them had bloody scratches in their faces as they had made their way through the brushwood in a hurry. But my mom didn’t speak German so she didn’t understand what they were asking her. Nevertheless, it was obvious that they wanted to know the closest way to Germany. So my mom showed them the direction to Antýgl and there they could already make themselves understood as Germans still lived there. Thus they eventually got across the border. Later we learned that they were German prisoners who had escaped from a large detention camp for POWs in České Budějovice.”
“The road from Nezdice through the Kašperské hory Mountains and Rejštejn along the Vydra River was very interesting. I remember that on the right-hand side, on the Hrádky, there were three stone towers. On one of them, there was a rocking stone, about three meters tall. Two U.S. soldiers were standing on it and as we were passing by with our wagon drawn by four cows, the soldiers were waving at us from up there. However, the tower with the rocking stone only lasted for about a year. The next summer, there was a heavy thunderstorm and apparently it was struck by lightning and the whole tower collapsed.”
“It’s possible to say that it was a fight for survival there, at the lodge in Horská Kvilda. It was a very secluded place... The Weishäupl family lived next door. It was a large family where the girls around the age of seventeen, eighteen, hauled wood on a sled from the forest as if they were men. The Weishäupl family wasn’t forcibly moved like the others because they were social democrats. But since all the other Germans had left, they didn’t want to stay there alone and went as well. So the entire area was rather deserted. If I remember correctly, only the Hones family stayed in Horská Kvilda and Mr. Hernisch, who had two sons, stayed in Schätzův Forest - today it’s called Rokyta. They all spoke Czech. They stayed until 1949. But when they learned about how well their compatriots were living on the other side of the border, they moved there as well. Otherwise, the area remained quite empty. Next to us lived the Krobova family. Bohouš Krob was older than me and worked there as the forest gamekeeper. His brother was my year and we went to school together. I liked going to the cinema in Srní with him and his dad.”
“Nobody likes to be occupied by foreign troops, even though it was Soviet troops – allied soldiers. At that point I made up my mind that I had to do something to show resistance. It was when I heard on the radio that the allied troops were arriving here. They were reported to be crossing the Moldava River. They were rolling in from the East, so I dressed in my walking clothes – back then, I had a blue dress and a peaked cap – and I set out from the settlement. I took a detour through such a small valley in order to not stir up the town. When I arrived at the place I waited at the edge of the road. A little later, the Soviet column started arriving. Then the convoy suddenly stopped short of me and the company’s commander was apparently talking on the walkie-talkie. Then they started to drive around me through the field. So the whole column of tanks and trucks was driving around me across the field. The first tank officer – his eyes almost popped out of the sockets when he saw me jumping on the road. Maybe he thought that I wanted to jump under the tank. Because they felt that somehow they were not welcome here. I didn’t have the intention to do that, but nevertheless I wanted to show them at least symbolically that they weren’t welcomed. The tanks kept rolling all-day-long to the Republic from all sides. Long queues quickly formed. The tanks were undamaged, but the military trucks had their windows smashed – there wasn’t a single window left intact. Somewhere farther eastwards they must have been pelted with stones. The trucks had their windows smashed. And the soldiers themselves had to protect their faces with their coats.”
“In the spring of 1945, we were still living in Nezdice in such a small house. Nezdice was liberated by the Americans. The first wave of the Americans seemed more like ceremonial troops to me, they looked as if they hadn’t seen the war at all. The tanks, jeeps, trucks, everything was shining, everything appeared to be brand new. When the convoy was passing us, they’d toss us meat cans, waffles and other stuff. My aunt – by then a young and single lady – waved at them and thus these things kept flying in our direction over the fence ... I also had a cousin in Ostružno and she’d go on rendezvous with the American soldiers. I’d accompany her to the meetings and most of the time, they’d meet nearby the stream. The Americans would see her and probably also other girls there. They would give me something to play with, usually a rifle or a machine gun, they’d also give me some candy... It was interesting. They’d even take us for a ride in their jeeps.”
Karel Voldřich was born on October 30, 1937, in Nezdice in Šumava (Bohemian Forest). Here, he experienced the exciting moment when the U.S. Army arrived in May 1945. In the fall of 1945, however, his father accepted the offer to become a ranger in a relaxed lodge on the Hamerský Creek between Antýgl and Horská Kvilda. This was the beginning of a period, when Karel would catch trout in the creek and set out on adventurous expeditions into the surrounding areas full of mysterious places, such as the abandoned hamlets left behind by its former German inhabitants who had been displaced. However, life was very hard here. At that time, he’d from time to time encounter German soldiers fleeing to the West or members of the financial guard, who were ill-reputed for the harsh way they treated the local German population. As time went on, Karel moved to other settlements in the area together with his family. At first, their new home became the lodge at Vysoká Myť near Svojší. Finally, they moved to Rokyta, at that time called predominantly Schätzův Forest. In Schätzův Forest, his father held the position of the caretaker of a section of the Vchynicko-tetovský navigation canal used by the West-Bohemian power plants. At the end of Karel’s school time, his interest was captured by a recruitment campaign of the Czechoslovak Army - he wanted to become an aircraft mechanic. This was the beginning of a long journey of Karel around the former Czechoslovakia which finally led him to Náměsť nad Oslavou, where he still lives now.
