"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."
MUDr. Herbert Jarošek was born in 1925 in Prague. His father was head of the Health Insurance Department of the Central Social Insurance Company. The family maintained contacts with the family of T.G. Masaryk before WWI. Mr. Jarošek´s first name was actually inspired by Masaryk´s son Herbert. He studied in a Prague grammar school. During WWII he was a conscripted labourer in the Autoarma factory in Prague-Holešovice. He was actively involved in the fighting during the Prague Uprising in May 1945. After the war he helped with the reconstruction of the border regions. At this time he also began studying at the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University, where he specialized in surgery. While still a student he worked as an assistant at the 2nd surgery clinic in Prague. After graduation he worked in the surgery department in the Pod Petřínem Hospital. In 1952-1954 he did his military service, most of which he spent as a doctor in the military hospital in Terezín and as a tank recon battalion doctor in Dobříčany near Žatec. In 1967 he left the Pod Petřínem Hospital and began working in the surgery department in Pilsen. In 1968-1973 he lived and worked in Kuwait, where he was the head of the surgery department at the elite hospital Mowasad. After his return to Czechoslovakia he worked in the University Hospital in Pilsen, and from 1977 he was the head of the surgery department in the hospital in Písek, from where he retired in 1992. Died in February 2016.
