Karel Jersák

* 1924  †︎ 2019

  • "They prepared it in 1940. It was clear after New Year's Day in 1941 that we would have to leave. We moved out in June I think. It was in two stages, and everybody was evicted to the Protectorate. So were we, but my dad was a prisoner of war during World War I and learned some German. He negotiated with the authorities, saying we had nowhere to stay in the Protectorate, so that we would move to our relatives in Zábřeh temporarily, and 'temporarily' eventually meant until the end of the war."

  • "Poles were very much ... like bandits after the war. They almost killed my uncle. They wanted his property and knew he was considering leaving. And they beat my uncle up so bad they could not wake him up. His name was Haizler. He was my mum's brother-in-law."

  • "My brother was a preacher. The communists harmed him terribly. They had no reason to imprison him, and they said in court that he may have been involved in something without knowing. That was the verdict. And for that, they damaged his mind. He was in a sanitarium for six months. He could be released after that, but he was unable to stand the hearing, because they made him crazy. He suffered from the consequences for ten years after returning home."

  • "Our preacher Pospíšil - his son and grandson are preachers here - was imprisoned. The reason was that he wrote to his friends in Poland to move in here, saying that in Šumperk ... Zelow people were mostly weavers. Some had establishents, some had just looms at home and made some extra money. He wrote that there were several textiles plants, so they could find a job, to bring them in here. They set it up as espionage, like he was disclosing what types of factories there are to a foreign country."

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    Vikýřovice, 23.08.2012

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Non-Baptists would come as well, as there was nothing Czech there.

Karel Jersák in 1941
Karel Jersák in 1941
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Karel Jersák was born in Nowa Wola near Zelow in Poland in 1924. He is the progeny of Czech émigrés after the Battle of Bílá Hora, who settled near Zelow in the early 1800s. He is one of the many of those Czechs who converted to the Baptist Church in the 1890s. After the rise of Czechoslovakia, some of the exiles came back to the home country of their ancestors. The Jirsáks were among them, and they settled in the German community of Vikýřovice (Weikersdorf) along with other families in 1925. They built a Baptist prayer house, which became a hub for Czechs in and around the village during the First Republic. Most of the Baptist families were moved out to the inland during the war. Teofil Malý, the local preacher, perished in Auschwitz. The Jersáks lived with their relatives in Zábřeh from 1941 to the end of the war. In the communist era, the entire community was under careful scrutiny of church secretaries. Local preacher Vilém Pospíšil was arrested in February 1955 and sentenced to three and half years imprisonment in a fabricated trial, and one-third of his property was confiscated. The witness‘ brother Vilém was also arrested and sentenced; he was a preacher in Kroměříž. Karel Jersák was active in the congregation even during the hard times. He was one of the state-approved laymen preachers, chairman of the congregation, and he led the Sunday school. He recalls having to report any change or visitor to the church secretary. Even though he did not face major problems in his position, living with faith under the communists was always a problem and the family experienced much humiliation imposed by the regime. Daughter Jarmila with family eventually emigrated to Canada. Karel Jersák with wife still live in Vikýřovice today and, as his entire life, he is actively involved in the life of the local Baptist congregation.