Doc. MUDr. Josef Andrýs

“I changed jobs several times. At last I got a job in a leather-producing factory in Třebechovice pod Orebem. The factory owner was tolerant. He even employed my Jewish classmate. He was working there until his transport to Terezín and then to Auschwitz. He was a healthy and strong boy. Although he knew that they would go to a concentration camp, he believed that he would survive. Unfortunately he has not come back. The factory director kept me there until 1943 . But after the defeat at Stalingrad the minister of propaganda Goebbels declared a so-called total war and the director was no longer able to keep me there. In winter 1943 I was sent to work in the company Krupp which had a factory in eastern Silesia. I was there until the time when the war front approached, until 1945. At that time I managed to escape home.”

“It was a cold day in March. As I walked from the train station to school I could see German airplanes landing at the airport. Convoys of vehicles began arriving soon after. It is interesting that the German cars were driving on the left and no order to do so had been issued, and in this moment the system of driving on roads thus changed for everyone.”

“The factory was about thirty kilometers east of Breslau. There were only small villages in the vicinity. When the war front drew near and the hospital had been already evacuated, I got into a train at some small train station near the hospital. I got to Breslau. I thought that there would surely be some train departing from there. At first I planned to go to Austria. But the train station was closed. There were piles of fur coats and suitcases everywhere. People were pushing against each other. But I was determined to get into the train somehow. I pushed my way toward the train. At some moments my feet were not even touching the ground. After several hours of riding through the night the train suddenly stopped. I thought that we had to be in the Protectorate now, and so I silently got off, nobody noticed me. Then I walked until I found myself in Kyšperk (present-day Letohrad – auth.’s note). I took a train to Hradec Králové. I got home without any problems. But the tough German regime was still present here.”

“At that time I was going to the dining hall in the Straka Academy Building. I learnt there that a funeral would be held for student Opletal. It was held on the morning of November 15th. Several thousand of us gathered there. When they then took his coffin to Moravia, the enormous crowd decided that they would go to the city centre and protest against the occupying authorities. Germans were taken by surprise by that, because they did not have enough information. Czech police tried to stop us but they acted with care, and thus they did not have any chance to stop the massive crowd. We passed through Vodičkova Street. People were waving their hands and trams were not riding. For a moment it seemed that freedom prevailed. Unfortunately it was a mistake. The Germans soon came to their senses. Part of the protesters who got all the way to the Old Town Square were attacked by SS units which arrived there in trucks. They began arresting people. Fortunately I managed to escape into a church and I hid myself there.”