Jaroslav Hlubůček

"Right in May 1945, we formed the Revolutionary Guards in Železný Brod, as everywhere else, and I, as a young man, was included in the group that was to go to liberate Jablonec. That was already on May 8." - "You were 16 years old?" - "I was 16. So we arrived in Jablonec with one stop that scared us a little bit, quite a lot. When we were going by bus, two German planes started attacking us at Bratříkov, the bus, and we jumped out near the Sokol gym and we were hiding in the woods. Nobody was hurt. The planes dropped a couple of small bombs, but fortunately away from us and away from the Sokol building, which was full of ammunition. That was fortunate, so the first arrival in Jablonec was full of fear and apprehension of what was in store for us. We were young and didn't want to leave life yet. But the next day the Soviet army arrived in Jablonec. We stayed there until the end of May as a Czech guard until the Czech soldiers arrived. I was there for three weeks." - "So you experienced looting?" - "I experienced the looting. It was terrible. We were supposed to prevent it. At first it was by Russian soldiers and then as our [soldiers] were coming in... it couldn't be prevented. Those were terrible days."

“One such tragicomic incident happened at the funeral of one of my friends… his name was Jirka Malý, a construction technician. He went on a motorcycle to see his fiancée in Chomutov and killed himself on his way. Of course, our whole unit had to attend the funeral. In addition to the commander´s speech, a civilian, the chairman of the trade union movement, finally said: 'Thank you, mate, for the work you have done, live long and well... ' We all got stiff, but when there was a chance, we said to each other: ´Well, we are working among such folks.'”

“There it was upsetting me that we were made idiots by people with perhaps only basic school education. That was a disaster. But on the other hand, we made beautiful friendships there, because there were many priests, a lot of people from the foreign army in England, so we had a chance to talk, have fun and somehow the military service was running fast, even though it was hard, we were still able to have a good time.”

Just before they came to nationalize, my dad´s friend called from the savings bank to advise him not to keep secret any of his claims from abroad or the details of his financial situation here... 'They already have got information about it, so be open in that regard in order to avoid further damage, or otherwise they´ll lock you up immediately.'”

"And when the Gestapo arrested Daddy in 1944 and took him to Pečkárna [Petschek Palace in Prague], Daddy came back after about three weeks, saying that he was suddenly summoned to see a doctor there. The doctor pronounced him being sick, and he released. The doctor told him to thank his business friends from Jablonec. To this day we do not know who they were who saved my father from the concentration camp and helped him return from Pečkárna."

"I was appointed to forced labour in Železný Brod - we were building roadblocks, sorting uniforms from the front... and [doing] quite disgusting things - because the uniforms from the front hadn´t been cleaned, we were sorting them for cleaning. So there were bloody remains of fingers in the gloves... That wasn´t very appropriate for my age."