František Ištván

"And, Mirek [Lumír Zapletal, nicknamed Mirek] wasn't in the cell anymore, and Milan, his brother, tells me that his parents died there. On the gate of every concentration camp there was the sign, 'Arbeit macht frei', 'work liberates'... and they meant that ironically! They killed people with the work! They loaded them with so much work, they died, like the stairs at Mauthausen... you've heard of that. And so, his father died there. They had him carry sacks of cement, and he was old, he died in two months. And the mother died in three. And Mirek, he worked there, the Germans in those sick bays, they called it 'Bedienung', 'service'--'dienen' means to serve, service, 'helper'. So, they used the doctors, and he was useful to them, as a doctor. And he wanted to be a doctor, so they made him one. They put him in the sick bay and from there they transferred him--I only heard of that lately--to Buchenwald, a concentration camp. He was a Bedienung there asvwell, and then they took him to Dora, that's a shaft where they produced V2. You know what V2 was. So, he survived, even though few ever returned from Auschwitz, or Osvěnčín as it was sometimes called. And they kept Milan Zapletal out of jail until April, apparently, because they thought that they would catch paratroopers on him who would be looking for a hiding place after landing. But, it didn't work out: some of the locations were already closed anyway. So, apparently, they kept him free until April, then they took him to Auschwitz, and he survived it too."

"The first thing he ordered, the first day, was the execution of the commander-in-chief of DoN that was the prime minister at the time. Eliáš his name was, or something like that; the names get mixed up a bit now. And Vančura straight away too.... And he was my favourite. Me, full of poetry, lyricality, as I told you before, I saw: Vladislav Vančura, the greatest Czech author of the time, executed, that was horrendous... you understand.... No one will hide me, not even my brother.... No one.... And my wife hid me. She was a teacher as well. She taught in Vémyslice like me. I also studied with her at the Teacher's Institute in Znojmo. And they, as Czechs expelled from the border region during that first annexation, they had built themselves a house in Jevišovice--that's where she took me, to her parents. And that's where they caught me, on July the 20th 1942, for being in the DoN. And I was held and judged in Vratislav (Wroclaw, Poland)--Breslau we called it at the time, the German way--at the Oberlandesgericht (High Court) for preparing, 'Für Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat', for preparing high treason."

"There in Breslau, in Vratislav near the Oberlandesgericht, the Czech High Court on Kletschkau Street there was the whole DoN, all teachers, NCO's. You see the teachers were usually NCO's in the countryside, because that was important for them, that they'd get themselves from up to an NCO while in the army. Patriots, all of them.... And they filled up the various functions, because in jail you don't just sit there, but there's various jobs to do as well. They called that 'kalfaktor' ['helper' - translator]. A kalfaktor is a chosen prisoner, and the teachers who were already there and knew how to do things--some were in the counting room, others in the smithy--all of them worked in their cells. I started by gluing envelopes, and then they called me to say I'd be a kalfaktor. I would wash the floors in front of the cells, I'd bring meals and clean the tiles in the central. Prisons are these star-like buildings, and the middle these circular center were called centrals. Thanks to one teacher from Brtnice, he put in a word for me--he had quite a reputation there. He was there some time, and he suggested me to the central. And so, I'm cleaning there, and every day we had this freistunda [free hour]--that's the first time I used the word--that's when they let you out into the courtyard. Freistunda... but they didn't give you a whole hour. And, they gave that to each section in turn. And so, I'm cleaning the central on the ground floor, and at the same time there were other kalfaktors cleaning there from the other sections of the building. And suddenly, I see a group from the neighbouring... corridor, and in the group--like you have this blue, then, we had how it's now called jeans, that was zeig, ordinary zeig. In the First Republic, that was the cheapest fabric! That's what we could buy, because it was the cheaper. So, our uniforms were made from that, this blue colour. And, in the group there were suddenly two with black uniforms and gold braids, and I recognised them: one of them was my collegue, Sedláček, and the other was my superior from teh DoN, Moudrý, from our district, from Křepice."

"Now, when you had served your sentence in jail, you didn't just go right home, you went through the Gestapo. And, the Gestapo either released you, or it put you in a concentration camp. Well, and so, I was transferred from Breslau to Brno, because the Gestapo had it's own little concentration camp here: Pod kaštany ['Under the chestnuts'], it was called. That was close to the Faculty of Law, here. Four buidings with a fence, like a concentration camp, everything was... the bunkbeds you know from the pictures--it was all the same. So, that's where I waited. They put me in the camp into the worst of the buildings: the fourth one that had its own fence extra. They kept the worst prisoners there. The others from the three buildings, they went to work in the city. But, not the fourth one. That one was fenced out. And, they kept Jews there and people who were supposed to be released or sent to a concentration camp. Well, and I was there until the 12th of May when they called for me. And, I thought that I'd be sent to the concentration camp, because there were a lot of informants in that building. They tormented a Jew to death right in front of us. They had him carry a roll of tar paper, which is really heavy, on his shoulders round and round the building. They kept him running, and at each corner someone kicked him too, until he died.... And so, there was this other prisoner there, he was more or less--I don't know if he was German or not--his name was Böhm--and he said: 'You see! That's how you go down the hole!' To me. So, I really thought that... they were putting together a transport, and I thought that I'd be in it. I was afraid. Of, course I was afraid; I was always afraid--we all were. Whoever says they weren't afraid, then don't believe them. But, they released me on the 12th of May 1943."