Jaroslav Hrubeš

“There was a lot of collaboration. We didn’t want to work for the Germans. So we injured ourselves in various ways. Do you see this mark on my arm? I took a grinder and a grinding wheel, and I held it to my arm. The pain was dreadful. I ground my own arm. To make it even worse, I clipped the tips of some matches, put them into the wound, and stroke a match. It caught immediately. So I burnt it and made it even worse. I didn’t go to the doctor’s that day, I wanted to leave until the morning of the following day. Before I went to bed, I wanted to make the wound worse, so I poured salt into it. I couldn’t endure it. I had to go wash the salt out after an hour. It stung and hurt terribly. And I went to the surgeon next morning.”

“There was a civilian standing by the office, and he addressed me: “Are you Jarda Hrubeš?’ I said ‘yes’. He said that when I went inside, I shouldn’t play hero, that I should agree to everything. I thank him and went inside. The German there told me to sit down, and he handed me a sheet of paper - it was a transport to Terezín. You can imagine I had probably turned chalk white. I passed the paper back to him, and he tore it in half and threw it in the bin. He spoke fluent Czech. He said he had studied in Prague for seven years - that’s why he spoke Czech so well. He said: ‘You won’t go to Terezín, you’ll go to a labour camp. I have to defend my decision. I can’t let you go completely.”