Antonín Holub

“Since our troops already had more members, we began building clubhouses. They were located where the open-air cinema is now in Slaný. There was a nice place with spruce trees in the corner, and we constructed two lodges there by ourselves. Our troops had more members than the local Sokol organization, and boys from Prague were coming here, too. Richard Jindra, the director of health insurance company in Slaný, served as the regional chief. I was the leader’s deputy. Later, more young boys with interest in Scouting began coming, and so I was appointed the leader of a Cub Scout pack. There were some fourteen boys in my troop. I recall Tonda Bosák, Honza Zmatlík, Petr Dražan, Miloš Matějka… The Matějka family lived on the town square, and they owned a soap-maker’s shop. Little Miloš was their only child, a little on the podgy side, and he would come from home equipped with a rucksack full of sausages for friends. Mr. Matějka would always come to me and say: ´I hope Milošek behaves properly.´ At the beginning of June 1940, the Gestapo from Kladno searched our clubhouses Na Hájích, and the activities of Junák (name used for the Boy Scout organization in Czechoslovakia - transl.’s note) became banned as of that day by the Gestapo’s order. The Boy Scouts decided to work illegally. They formed an illegal group called Blue Circle led by Antonín Rosenkranz. In 1942, while I was doing forced labour in Germany, I kept in touch with Standa Červený through letter-writing. Only after the war I learnt that he had been a member of this illegal organization. In his letters, he was asking me what I was doing and where, and I was answering him in my letters, and thus providing information for the Blue Circle. (Note: the Boy Scout troop Roveři from Slaný worked under the leadership of Antonín Rosenkranz for the organization Blue Circle from 1940 till the end of the war. This organization was linked to the Intelligence Brigade, which was sending reports about the situation in Germany to England. Its members were decorated with the Junák Cross “For the Homeland 1939-45” after the war). After our country became occupied by the Germans, our Protectorate government, in order to help bear the burden for the Germans, gave the entire population born in 1920 at their disposal to be sent for conscripted work to Germany.”

“Václav Koten and Ota Pátek established a Boy Scout troop in Slaný. At first we didn’t have any clubhouses and we were meeting in a garden house in the Rosenkranz’s family garden. Antonín Rosenkranz, whose father was a barber, was one of the troop leaders. The troop gradually grew in members. Václav Koten began cooperating with six tramps, who built their own lodge in Kalivody by themselves. There was no lock on the door of the lodge, it was kept open all the time. They became our Scout leaders. At first I was in František Holina’s troop. There was great unemployment in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. Holina was without work, and so was Pepa Huml. František Zíma, whose original name was Winter, learnt the furrier’s trade in his widowed mother’s shop. Later he took on the leadership of the troop of which I was a member. At that time we already had four troops, from Cub Scouts, through Rovers, to the oldest members.”