Herbert Jarošek

"Suddenly, some old German unteroffizier (NCO – transl.'s note) came running out from the Electric Company building. He had a gun in his hand and was shooting at people. He didn't hit anybody. Eventually he disappeared in the adjacent building. He probably ran out of ammunition. At that moment I was two floors above him. I was looking out of the window and displaying a Czechoslovak flag outside. People pulled him out of the house, on to the cobbled street, which is today covered with asphalt, and they stabbed him to death there."

"When the paratroopers were airlifted to Czechoslovakia, they came equipped with all sorts of false documents, but at that time, so-called employment books were being introduced and they didn't have them. The health insurance companies had to issue these books. Employees of the insurance companies provided these documents to the paratroopers through various organizations in the resistance movement. Many of these people from health insurance companies who had been involved in this were therefore later among the executed."

"Somewhere in the attic we found the sign on the door: ´Department of Marxism-Leninism.´ We knocked on the door and there were two young people in the room. One of them was Pudík, who was the department boss. We told him that we needed a certificate stating that we had passed an exam from Marxism-Leninism. He asked us: ´And when would you like to come? In about a month?´ We told him: ´No, we want to graduate on Friday, next week.´ We argued for a while. After ten minutes, we held signed certificates stating that we had passed the state examination in Marxism-Leninism."

"Herbert Jarošek was a member of the Social Democratic Party since 1946. After the union of the Social Democrats with the Communist Party in 1948, all its members had to join the communist party. Jarošek refused. “When it was my turn, I told them: ´Comrades, I cannot be a member of your party.´ They asked: ´Why?´ I said: ´Because I am not a communist.´ It was a risky step because I could be dismissed from the faculty, and what not. The head of the committee, Andrej or Ivan Horvaj, was a Hungarian Jew who later became a hypnotist at the psychiatric clinic. We knew each other from our student years, but I didn't know the other committee members - there were about ten of them. Horvaj said: ´Comrades, this is Bolshevik self-criticism! Who of us can say that he is a communist?´ This changed my position entirely".

"As the train came on the viaduct we tried to shoot at the Germans who were under Pražačka, under Štvanice on the other side of the river. The engineman had been on duty since Friday (it was Monday 7th May). He and the boiler-man were already suffering from lack of sleep and they were exhausted. I don’t know what happened, but the train suddenly stopped on the bridge and the Germans hit us."

"You know, I have always thought that a surgeon's life is divided into two phases: during the first one, he learns from others, whether in school, or from colleagues or superiors, and in the second phase he passes this knowledge onto his younger colleagues."