“There was a chateau in Třeboň where the Germans kept their valuables. It was a true treasure trove. On the fourth day, when I came to Třeboň, the Germans were loading trucks with valuables, when suddenly three Russian military jeeps arrived and gunfire broke out. We hid and after a while Russian tanks reinforced the Russian troops. The Germans left everything as it stood and took a flight. Many of them fell there. A few days later, I joined a paramilitary group that was after the Germans. We were lying on the ground looking out for German soldiers who were supposedly hiding in a forest that was in front of us. I was given a rifle and told to shoot at everything that moved. I fired from the rifle about three times but I have no idea whether I actually hit something. All I know is that I had bruises on my shoulder from the recoil. In Třeboň, I saw the dead bodies of killed German officers lined up on the ground in one yard. As we were looking at them, I said that we should better go away before some German sniper will shoot us in revenge. At that time, I was really scared as hell. I tried to lay low and don’t go out too much. I was in love with a girl but I was too scared to go and visit her. By then I was twenty years old.”
“It was great love. Her name was Alexandra Petrová and she came from Leningrad. I loved her very much. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who wanted her. Another one who had a liking for her was a Russian officer, a Mongolian. Once, it was already dark, he shouted my name at the Jindřichohradecká Gate. I knew that this was serious and therefore I took to my heels. I heard that he fired three shots but I dodged each time and he didn’t hit me. I ran through the Panská zahrada gardens all the way to the embankment of the Svět pond. The only thing that came to my mind was to jump into the pond and swim across the water to the little island in the middle of the pond, about 100 meters from the bank. There, I waited till the next morning. I was worried about what to do now. Eventually, I swam across the pond, climbed out of the water on the bank and returned through the gardens to town and went straight to the Zlatý kapr hotel, where I changed my clothes and in the morning, when I was handing around the breakfast, I acted as if nothing had happened. But she didn’t come for breakfast so I knew that something had happened.”
“We came to Bystřice to the Apelplatz. There, they separated us and about 120 of us went to Tvoršovice. We walked along the airport and on the way I met two buddies from southern Bohemia. We immediately became friends and we would stick together throughout the whole term in the labor camp. We slept on four-story bunk beds in the former stables. As there were so many of us, it wasn’t even cold there. We even had a small stove there. In the morning, they poured some black coffee into our mess tins; we got a piece of bread and some marmalade. Then we had to go to work. However, first of all, there was the roll call. We had identification number on badges that we had to wear. We weren’t marked with the star. The head camp warden told us in the very beginning: ‘You’re going to work hard here. If you behave and work hard, nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“I’d like to add a few more words about my dad, how he ended up. In 1941, he was conscripted for forced labor on a military farm near Tábor. There, he worked on the field and was tasked with various other support work. In 1943, we lost contact with him. When I went there to visit him some Czechs told me that he had been imprisoned. We had no idea what happened to him. Around the middle of April, 1943, my older sister who was more in touch with him, received a package with my father’s clothes and belongings from the Little Fortress in Theresienstadt and a message saying that my father died on April 12, 1943. It didn’t say why he died but his clothes were stained with blood so it was clear to us that something must have happened to him. I was a young boy and I loved my dad very much, that’s probably why I refused to accept it as a fact. For over a year after the war had ended I would keep hope that he would come back to us.”
“The wake-up call in the concentration camp was at six o’clock in the morning. Breakfast was at six thirty and the roll call was at seven and then we went to work. Once, I didn’t make it quite on time to the roll call. The guard came to me and said: ‘you don’t know when you’re supposed to be here?’ I tried to apologize: ‘Entschuldigen bitte…‘. But he didn’t even let me finish the sentence and punched me in the face. The blow was so fierce that he actually knocked out one of my teeth. The second time I was beaten was in in Bystřice, where I received a fist blow to the ear. My eardrum broke and I’m basically deaf on that ear until today.”
Karel Freund was born on February 16, 1925, in Halámky in South Bohemia in a mixed family. His father was Jewish and his mother, who came from Vienna, had died before the war. In 1938, after the occupation of the Sudetenland, Karel together with his father and his siblings had to leave Halámky. The family split up and Karel was staying with various relatives and family friends. After 1939, the family began to suffer from the burden of the Nazi persecution. In 1943, Karel’s father was arrested and imprisoned in the so-called “Small Fortress” of Theresienstadt, where he died in April 1943. In August 1944, Karel was summoned to a transport bound for a labor camp for Jewish half-breeds in Tvoršovice, near to Bystřice in central Bohemia. In early May 1945, along with other prisoners, he freely left the camp and set out for a trip home. He spent his first post-war days serving Russian officers in the Zlatý kapr (Golden Carp) hotel located on the square in Třeboň. Because of a love affair with a Russian medic, he got into conflict with an officer of the Red Army and he had to save his life by fleeing to western Bohemia, to Karlovy Vary, where he still lives today. Until his retirement, he worked in various restaurants. Karel Freund died on March 2015.
