"And everyone told us: ´What have you been doing there in Russia? We haven’t sent you there.´ We considered us partiots. We lived for the country, we were dying for it and we went to lay down our lives voluntarily. I left along with two veteran soldiers. They took me with them, I was sort of alive, eager to do anything. We thought we would run further, to Poland. And from Poland we would go through Hungary to Yugoslavia and further to France."
"I would go to a war once more. I was then a sort of professional who learned something from the bad things. I would go fight again, I wouldn’t be afraid, honestly. Today, I know that life is a lottery. In Kyiv we won, even recieved laurels and many medals. There were many promotions there because it was a big test of our whole army. Because there at Sokolov, we didn’t succeed."
"The religious feeling was so strong where I lived, that there could have been a hundred Lenins and a hundred Stalins and none would take the people away from religion. It was so after the WW I and it remained that way throughout the WW II. No Lenin would prevent the people from going to church even at night. When there was fast, I ate a piece of bread and ash! Because the Lord said, now you need to fast because once you are going to account for what you did. People even fainted, that wasn’t good, but it was simply so."
"And so we continued for a long time. Before I got there to Vorkutstroj and Kolyma – Kamchatka – it truly took one and half months, before we reached the end. Then we would get to the sea, board a ship and sail for one and half days. And then there was a narrow-railway, the trains wouldn’t go no further. We walked by it for eight hours. And then we could see the huge camps. On a counterslope, as far as our eyes could see. One after another."
"There practically was no free man in the lagers. There were just prisoners. They were in charge of the fabrics, mines, everything. There was nowhere to escape to and where it would be possible, there was a dam. Noone of those who left survived out there. No one! From the Russians taken captive in Finland, I got a decree that I was a miner – I went to the mines. I was able to do anything, I made floors or pit-props. I handled that. Then they put me to a fireman. He had no men there, they all left for the front. They taught me to drill, they taught me to shoot, they taught me to command! And I tell you, I recieved a decree „The Best Czechoslovak man“!"
Jan Huzinec was born in May 1921 at Carpatho-Ukraine (formerly part of Czechoslovakia) as one of four children. In 1939 he recieved a draft order. It was an error, though, because the order was originally adressed to his cousin, who was in Belgium at that time. He nonetheless stayed in the army. After only a month the army was dissolved, though. Huzinec decided to cross the border and fight the Nazis. With a few fellows he planned a journey to France, however mostly officers headed West and the young private therefore set off East. They were detained by Hungarian troops at the border and Huzinec was subject to a cruel interrogation. The Hungarians couldn’t prove that he wanted to emigrate and thus he was released at last. During his second attempt he got to the hands of Russians at Polish territory. They sentenced him to five years of convict labour for illegal border-crossing. After a long journey he got to a working camp Vorkutstroj. There he spent three years before an amnesty for Czechoslovak citizens came up. In the meantime he got skilled in various crafts. The head of the camp therefore persuaded him to stay and work in the camp than to go get killed to the front. He refused and got to his way tu Buzuluk. He arrived ill, malnoutrished, dressed in rugs. In the army he took care of general Svoboda’s horses and then became a member of an anti-tank artillery. He even met Heliodor Píka whom he respected a lot. He fought at Kyiv, Bila Tserkva and at battle of the Dukla Pass. He experienced a number of air-raids and was even wounded a couple of times. The end of war came when he was near Svitavy. Consequently, he stayed in the army where he served until retirement. On the constraint of Secret Police, he joined the Communist Party. Even though, he couldn’t return home to Carpatho-Ukraine for a long time since in 1939 he was sentenced as a „traitor of nation”. He spent the end of his life in Rokycane, being active in Association of Fighters for Freedom and in Czechoslovak Legionary Community. He died in June 2009.
