"Well, there I did the biggest stupid thing that ever existed in my life. Even though I was brought up against the Communists, I sat there and gave a nice speech about how great it was going to be. How everyone will have everything they need, they'll get it. No one will be exploited etc etc etc. I believed it, dumbass. Because I had a working class, proletarian background, I was welcomed. I was the kind of person who, when he started doing something, would get into it. I told myself that I would be the one to help make the world a better place. When I told dad, I thought he was going to kill me. He didn't talk to me for months. I told him, 'Oh, no, Dad, it's different today.' Dad said that politics was bullshit. Years later, I found out that politics is bullshit. I started to rise in the Communist Party, became secretary at the medical school. Even then it started to mess with my head. There was this box and they told me that if somebody comes in, let them go to it and don't worry about it. There were recorded sins of the listeners who were to be expelled. I didn't find that out until later. I was on the faculty committee for the Communist Party, and there were doctors and assistants from other departments. A person came with three indexes, labeled MUC [Medicinae Universae Candidatus, candidate of medicine], yet he had not passed a single examination in them. The MUCs were employed in the health service as future doctors. They were given a deadline by the commission by which they had to pass the first rigorosum [Slovak for oral examination in order to obtain the title of doctor]. Understandably, they mostly dropped out. I swear, and I tell everyone, during my time there, not a single person was fired for political reasons."
"We were watching when the Germans came through Trnava to Poland. The SS were dressed up, laughing. All giggles, hahaha. And now I saw them retreating, again by another route to the Small Carpathians. One tank was pulling another tank, a truck was pulling two or three cars. Dirty, torn, unwashed, with their heads down. This went on for two nights and one day. From the 3rd to the 4th of April, it was silent as silence. We got up in the morning, nobody was there. Dad was an experienced warrior. The school had large cellars under the whole building. Dad put our beds in there, sometimes he came out. I watched too. Around noon, we suddenly see clouds of dust swirling on the access road from town. We were looking out from a pile of coke. Two horses were pulling tiny carts. On them were soldiers with mortars or machine guns. And soon the whole square in front of us was full. That was the Russians, I didn't see a single car. They came to us: 'Nět, germanov nět?' [No, there are no Germans here?] Dad showed them around the school, then they left. Within an hour they disappeared. After a while the same thing, but with bigger carts, there were more of them. The school had a playground on one side and an orchard on the other. They set up mortars in it. I must say they were very drunk. When they were high, they put a mortar under a tree. The first volley killed one of their own soldiers and wounded two. Dad went to the officer, who said: 'Eto nicego, nas mnogo!' [It´s ok, there are many of us!]"
"When the Germans started to lose, a large number of bomber planes started to fly over Trnava, it was the Americans and the British. We counted them, sometimes seventy, sometimes a hundred, and even a hundred and twenty. We weren't afraid of them. The worst were the planes that flew back alone. That meant it was a plane that had a malfunction or was damaged. It had bombs on board that it couldn't land. They were looking for a suitable place to 'dump' them. When I was in sexta, there were air raids every day. We listened to the Hungarian radio, where they said: 'Fidel, fidel,' which means 'beware, beware'. We'd say, 'Fidel, fidel, the English are flying rations!' Then the sirens started blaring, there was an alert and everyone had to leave the school. We were waiting for that, especially when we had a test to write. It was only like that until Christmas. Trnava had a lot of dirt roads, and in the winter they got up to two metres of snow. What did they do? They took sixth graders, seventh graders. They gave them shovels and shoveled the snow. The front from Hungary was approaching, the border was about 80 kilometres away. We heard explosions and saw flashes at night. Around Trnava they decided to make anti-tank trenches. By then the Slovak National Uprising was already underway, and there was a German garrison in our school. They took us again, gave us shovels and showed us a sample. We were in pairs, about three to four metres apart, and we dug. One day the weather was beautiful, sunny. There were two or three German guards watching us for two kilometres. When they crossed, we sat down and played cards. We sabotaged it. Suddenly we see a plane coming back, nobody thought it could be a danger. Planes routinely fired staniol strips against radar. I see something's coming. I said, 'Oh, they've launched the strips!' All of a sudden, VRRRUUUM, and it started beeping and whistling and coming at us. We ran to our holes and in a moment it exploded. We went to have a look after a long time. There was a hole about two to three meters deep, four meters in diameter, about forty to fifty meters from us."
Full recordings
1
Domov seniorů U Přehrady, Jablonec nad Nisou, 08.04.2022
Milan Fičura was born in Trnava on 30 October 1928 to Pavel and Terezia Fičura, a year after his brother Pavel, and ten years later his sister Jolana was born. In 1929, when the worldwide economic crisis broke out, his father was fired from his job as a strike organiser. They wouldn’t hire him anywhere. He was a French Legionnaire and went to France to prepare the conditions for the family’s relocation. His wife later failed to travel with the children. In 1931, Pavel Fičura returned to Slovakia. He worked as a janitor, but the whole family helped. The Ficuras’ had little money. Milan had worked hard in school and in the garden since childhood and had no time for friends. He continued his studies at the grammar school as an excellent student. In 1947, he enrolled in medical school and excelled there, but paying for his studies was beyond the family’s means. Milan joined the army to get a scholarship and in turn supported his parents. In 1948 he believed the communist propaganda and joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), becoming its secretary at the medical faculty. He graduated in 1952. Shortly afterwards he married Hana Zitová and remained working at the school in Hradec Králové. Thanks to his aspirant work, he was transferred to the Ministry of Defence, at which time he had two children - Dagmar and Pavel. He worked in Prague for five years until 1968. He understood his mistake, his belief in communism, in 1958. He left the Communist Party ten years later, after the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. He was discharged from the army in 1970 and began practicing medicine for the first time in his life. At the age of 43, he received his first certification and became a general practitioner. It was the most beloved job of his life. He worked until he was 84. He rejoiced in the changes brought about by the Velvet Revolution in 1989, but suffered a lifetime of regrets for having supported the totalitarian regime as a communist. His last years were spent in a retirement home in Jablonec nad Nisou, where his daughter Dagmar lived. He died on 24 October 2022.
Colonel Milan Fičura, Deputy Chief of the Military Medical, Scientific and Training Institute, with a delegation from the German Military Medical Academy in Greifswald, Hradec Králové, 1970
Colonel Milan Fičura, Deputy Chief of the Military Medical, Scientific and Training Institute, with a delegation from the German Military Medical Academy in Greifswald, Hradec Králové, 1970
