'boilers"

“The true liberation for us was when the Americans bombed the railway station in Klatovy in April 1945. The trains stopped rolling and we had the best and longest holidays in my life. I must not forget about the ‘boilers’ – it was American fighter pilots whose mission it was to blow up trains in order to wreak chaos on the railway. So they would prevent the Germans from fleeing and from shipping in weapons and ammunition. Well and these guys were cool. They flew above the train and the engine driver knew what he had to do. They then waited till the passengers got out of the train and into a safe distance and then they bombed the train. Boom, boom, boom… When they saw that white steam is coming out of the boiler, the job was done. And we waited for the next train to come and went home. But since that April we had beautiful holidays.”

• Born on 23 February 1934 in Prague
• His family moved to Sušice in the Autumn 1939 where he spent the whole war
• he saw the liberation of the entire region by the U.S. military in the spring of 1945
• After the war he became an avid Boy Scout and participated in the last camp before the ban of the Boy Scouts, the camp was held in the environment of the recently displaced German villages
• After the first off-putting experiences with the communist regime he became a teacher, working in Hartmanice, Srní and finally he went to Kašperské Hory
• He is a witness of the systematic devastation of the region, of the shattering of entire villages and their leveling with the ground after the destruction of churches and cemeteries
• After constant conflict with the regime, he was dismissed from school in 1975
• He worked fourteen years in the boiler room of a local company as a stoker, his children were prevented from studying
• Lives in Kašperské Hory, is dedicated to tourism and sports, especially skiing, is interested in the history of the region and is the author of two books on this topic