Karel Jakeš

* 1923

Forced labour during the WW2
1944 - 1945 - The liberation of Czechoslovakia
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    About the major´s wife, who reported him to the Germans

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    "That's what I saw, because where I got trained in the shop, beside there was the police station and the officers knew me, so once the officer saw me out of the windows, when I was walking down the street and he called: "Come on in!" So I came in, he went into the cabinet, pulled out a book, found the right page and said, "Here you can read, who reported you." That's why I could tell her, because I knew, she was like that. And her husband, he was really very good man, a village mayor and a farmer."

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    Escape from total deployment

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    "My father must have written that he needed me back home to help at the harvest. And accidentally I got holidays and went to the harvest. Well, but I forgot to go back. So it took two months to find me. I was staying at our neighbors or relatives. When they found me, I went to jail. They called for Berlin, that I was already discovered, so a policeman came all the way from Berlin to get me with yet one postman."

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    Bombing of Berlin at the end of war

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    "We were waiting for it to fall on us, and we were lucky not to get hit. Well, then at four o´clock the lights went out. Yes, four hundred canons started firing, at four the lights went out, and water was cut off at four thirty. On May 21 two Czechs went out, as we figured it was suitable, we were already rather thirsty and hungry. So one of them offered to go with me to get water. He brought a bucket, me too, and then we went out on the street. In the street there used to be pumps, where water could be drained."

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    České Budějovice, 06.04.2018

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    duration: 55:15
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We experienced bombing three times a week

Karel Jakeš
Karel Jakeš
photo: Archiv - Pamět národa
photo: Archiv - Pamět národa
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Karel Jakeš was born on October 25, 1923 in Stupná near Kremže. After school, he started working in a local grocery store. In 1942 he was totally deployed to the Reich. In Berlin he worked at the Reich Post. His parents needed him for the harvest in the summer, so Karl got two weeks off. He did not return to work. But the neighbor reported him, and the police came to get him from Germany. Karel was interrogated in Prague and then he served three months in prison. He was then sent back to Berlin. Toward the end of the war he witnessed many allied bombings. He had to stay for four days in the cellar without any food or water. After the war he had difficulties to actually get back to Czechoslovakia. All his life he worked in shops around České Budějovice.

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