“Two police men entered the room. One of them went to the judge and passed him an envelope. The judge opened it and after a while he turned to us and told us that we were required to come to the table one at a time, read the letter and sign it. The letter said that the accused confirm by their signature that they will not talk about what they had seen and witnessed in the StB custody. In case they had done so, they would have violated the law and expose themselves to further judicial prosecution. By signing the letter I have changed my mind about a request to be confronted with the trafficker.”
“In order to make Kožíšek believe that this was not a staged operation, the StB agent won the trust of Mrs. Ulman who then introduced him to Kožíšek as a western agent with the mission to end the totalitarian regime with the help of trustworthy citizens. Kožíšek believed in it and agreed to cooperate in the presence of Mrs. Ulman. Afterwards, this agent – today we know that his name was Vasil Kosť – was issuing various tasks. (Note: According to the archive materials Vasil Kosť was only an instrument of the state security, he was manipulated by its agents.) One of these tasks was to provide aliments for paratroopers stationed in the Brdy forests and elsewhere. The food was to be collected from fellow citizens who were willing to help. Kožíšek was instructed to produce a list of the donors and he would then hand the list over to Kosťa.”
“We were standing in front of the border zone area and were supposed to go on to a right-hand bend which was followed by a short straight ending in a left-hand bend. Tachovák decided to go ahead to see if the guards that he had told us he knew very well were already on patrol at this hour. He asked me if I wanted to hang my bag on the bike. I had my personal belongings in that bag. When he disappeared in the bend we walked on as agreed in order to estimate the distance of the straight leading to the second bend. We were mired when we found out that he was nowhere to be found. Before we could express our puzzlement, three police men with machine guns jumped out of the bushes to our left-hand side. They yelled at us: ‘hands up!’ We heard the same from behind our backs from another group of police agents. One of them told us the verdict: ‘you are arrested for suspected border crossing. Comrade put them in handcuffs.”
“When they were coming back, we waved to them - we knew already that they were the Americans. They waved to us too. They were stationed overlooking Žichlice, they had a tent above the Žichlice agricultural co-op. We would ride there on bikes to look at them.”
“The investigator got really mad at me since he thought that I was making a fool of him. He told me: ‘so you’re telling something different to your friend in the prison cell and to us here? I’m really sorry that we haven’t shot such a rogue like you are right at the border. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t do it now. The public thinks that you’ve crossed the border anyway’. At that moment he pulled a gun and held it in his hand.”
“I would then visit Pilsen, and it was normal for us to look (at American soldiers - ed.). When they were preparing for the parade - that was to say goodbye in November (1945), all the tanks, all the armours were spray-painted and cleaned, they had their compressors and spray guns, they cleaned it all. They shone like new. They did the parade when they were saying goodbye. When you stood on the pavement and the tanks drove by, it would sway like this - due to the weight of the tank. It was jubilant, it was the end of the war. Everyone respected them.”
“[Where did the demarcation line lead through? Were you in the Russian zone already?] Yes, we were in the Russian part. It passed through Pilsen, Třemošná, and then it made a diversion to Plasy and onwards to Manětín, from Manětín to Žlutice and behind Libina - that was in the Sudetes and the demarcation line lead on from there. And then Mariánské Lázně. [So (in Jarov) the Americans were replaced by the Russians?] The Russians came. Such differences. The Americans were smartly dressed, the blacks were especially attractive. When they laughed - white teeth. The girls liked that a lot, and a number of them left to America with them.”
“’When was the last time you saw a psychiatrist?’ ‘Why should I see a psychiatrist?’ ‘Well, you’re telling me that you want to go to the army but this book says that you’ve already passed your military service’. ‘I don’t know what that book says, it’s not my fault. All I’m telling you is that I haven’t yet passed my military service’. ‘Well, if you insist, I’ll send you to the service. I have a couple of sick guys who can’t be admitted to the services and they have to be in the 18th garrison in Pilsen, so why don’t you shop up there on November 23 as well?’ When I came back from the service two years later a coincidence happened. I was walking down a street in Pilsen and suddenly somebody shouts at me: ‘Mojmír!’ I turned around but didn’t recognize anybody so I walked on. When he shouted at me for a second time he raised his hand so I could see who was shouting. It was Véna Růžička from a village close to Jarov. He told me wanted to talk with me about something so we sat down on a bench next to the Intercontinental hotel in a park. He told me when he was working in the army office he was filling in the army books. Once, he came across my book and just for fun, he put in there that I had already passed my military service since he learned from his parents that I was abroad. The clerks then put it into the records and that’s why they thought that I had already passed my service.”
Mojmír Fencl was born on April 5, 1930, in Jarov nearby Kaznějov. His whole life is connected to this place. His parents ran a small farm in the village. After he graduated from elementary school and passed his studies at an agricultural school in Kralovice, he began to work at a tractor station in nearby Obora. Through his neighbor Václav Kožíšek, Mr. Fencl got into contact with Kosťa, an anti-Communist resistance fighter whose group was infiltrated by the state security. Because he feared his arrest, Mr. Fencl and his friends, accepted Kožíšek’s offer to take them across the border to western Germany. The border crossing on October 28, 1951, was handled by Kožíšek and they were supposed to be taken across the border by an unknown person, a certain man called „Tachovák”. Unfortunately, it was a trap plotted by the state security and the young men were arrested in the border zone. Mojmír Fencl was kept for four months in custody without anyone knowing about his whereabouts. Eventually, in March 1952, he was sentenced to two years in prison by the district court in Pilsen for the criminal act of attempting to leave the country, evading the military service and for not having reported a crime. He served his sentence in labor camps in Hornoslavkovsko -camp 12 and Ležnice. Subsequently, friends of his were arrested, as well as Václav Kožíšek and other farmers who were helping the alleged resistance fighter Kosťa. The other inhabitants of the village were forced to establish a cooperative of farmers. The whole operation of the state security was aimed at the collectivization of the farmers in Jarov and its surroundings. After his return from prison in May 1953 (he was granted amnesty) and after he finished his compulsory military service with the auxiliary technical battalions, Mr. Fencl worked in the local farms collective and later as a mason for the chemical works in Kaznějov.
