Dušan Žampach

* 1951

  • "No one was running right past the border crossing. I remember one case where young people emigrated and arranged with their parents, I don't know whether from Prague or elsewhere, to bring them a dog that was theirs. So they stood on the German side in Strážne to the barrier at that time. They let the parents into the customs house. They let them into the customs with the dog. I don't know how they got there, except for the custom house, what their permit was, because it wasn't normal. The parents drove there with the dog, the owners whistled from the other side and the dog ran the 350 metres or so. The cops could have gone crazy, but it didn't make any difference. Whether the dog was wearing microchips or something, I don't know. But it was kind of funny to watch the helplessness of the border guards."

  • "That June-July 1990, when the holidays in Bavaria began. The roof had poles, it was on about four poles. I was really holding on to that one pole and just watching it go by, and I was afraid that I would get dizzy and fall under some car. Those were passenger cars. The trucks were going too."

  • "The opening took place on September 7, 1971, after much deliberation. On the German side they were ready perhaps a month in advance. The Czech side could have opened it perhaps as early as the beginning of August. But what happened there was that the German side wanted to make an event out of it, the opening of the western border, which was not at all desirable in the time of normalisation. There were German journalists from the daily newspapers, camping in the opposite meadow, waiting for the Czechs to make a move and open the border crossing. Eventually the Czechs decided that it was no longer bearable to drag it out, so they all agreed. The day before, they announced to the Bavarian side: 'Tomorrow at 10 o'clock we will open.' On the Czech side, there was no mention that anything was being opened, it was not desirable at all. There was no such information at all. Nevertheless, the people from Lenora, you could say the officials from the Lenora glassworks, found out, they had an exit clause, which was the assumption. Two hours before the opening they were already standing at the barrier in Strážne waiting. When the hour came, they were let in from the so-called heavy barrier up to the customs. Of course, they had to look around. There were already some German journalists there from the German side. They [officials from the Lenore glassworks] had a suitcase full of that glass. In short, several times more than the limit at that time. I don't remember exactly what it was. There were phone calls to the Customs headquarters: 'There's a situation here, we're opening up, the Lenore glassworks are here, they've got a lot, what should we do?' But they had much more than double. Anyway, they left it afterwards, so they were the first passengers."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    České Budějovice, 16.01.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 01:18:04
  • 2

    České Budějovice, 04.03.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 01:09:04
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

They made us look for microdots, but no one told us what they looked like

Dušan Žampach, mid 70s
Dušan Žampach, mid 70s
zdroj: Archive of the witness

Dušan Žampach was born on 2 April 1951 in Prague to Věra and Dušan Žampach. Věra Žampachová, originally from Čkyně in South Bohemia, worked as a hairdresser in Prague, where she met Dušan Žampach, a clerk at the District National Committee in Prague 10. He and his mother then returned to Šumava to live with his grandparents. In 1966 he entered the Secondary Industrial School of Transport in Pilsen. In August 1968, he and his family stayed with relatives in Germany. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, they seriously considered staying abroad. In 1971, he began working as a customs officer at the newly opened Strážný border crossing in Šumava. He worked for the customs administration until 2001, when he retired. He describes the circumstances of the opening of the Strážný border crossing, the operation and conditions at the customs office until 1989 and the subsequent post-revolutionary transformation. Although he was recommended several times to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), he never joined the party. He describes life in the border zone. In the 1970s he became a member of the volunteer defenders of Šumava. He is active in several associations devoted to Czech-German relations - in the Grainetský soumari association or the Zlatá stezka (Golden Trail). At the time of filming in 2024 he lived in Vimperk.