Leo Eliáš

“Back then I was in the right place at the right time. I was in the vicinity of Banská Bystrica, where the uprising began, at the time I was sent to work there with other people. We were taken to the city by a partisan leader who then became a high-ranking officer. He took us to Banská Bystrica to show us the uprising. There was great enthusiasm, lots of singing, poems were recited - Hoj, mor ho, mor ho! Detvo mojho rodu [Hey, kill him, kill him! Youth of my blood] by Samo Chalupka... And then he took us to Zvolen. There they dressed us in military clothing and gave us five one repeater rifles, and we became soldiers of the 1st Czechoslovak Army in Slovakia.”

“I stayed there one month, I was young and healthy, and then I got a ‘commandeering’, that is a travel order, to Krosno. Krosno was already in the liberated part of Poland and General Svoboda’s headquarters was there. They drafted those of us who came as volunteers into his army; it was called the foreign army in the Soviet Union.”

“Well, and there (in the hospital in Lviv) I recovered quickly and I was ready in a month. So I got a travel order, and if it’s of any interest of importance, a small cooking pot, tea, and dried rations. And at every station they had boiling water, so I could make myself tea along the way. I travelled through Rzeszów and Przemyśl, those were cities, to Krosno - the travel order was for Krosno. It was in such territory that I could ask where to go next, I got there very quickly and easily. Well, and they had an enlisting there, it wasn’t just me, there were volunteers from all over gathering to give the Germans a seeing-to.”