Václav Jeřábek

“At night, all of a sudden, they started shelling us with their mortars. Our position must have been somehow compromised or reported – nobody will ever find out anymore what happened. But anyway, the Germans opened fire from Baťovany at our side, one mine after another, we didn’t know where to hide. My friend, with whom I was mostly together, got lost in the mêlée and I couldn’t find him. A lot of guys died there and I was naturally afraid about his fate. But when I came back to the headquarters I was told that he had been wounded and sent to the hospital. SO I said to myself that I’ll go and find him.”

“We took refuge in the mountains and were searching for guerrilla groups that we could join. But the guerrilla groups that were operating in the mountains were in deep trouble as well due to the fact that the Germans and Slovaks had occupied all of the surrounding territory and they were having a hard time finding food for themselves. First of all, people need to eat and they couldn’t even get into a village to buy something because the Germans and the guard units were everywhere. So we were wandering the mountains and our supplies were running out. We realized that we didn’t know what to do. We ran into one guerrilla unit and they said: ‘we have nothing’. We were in the woods and while we still had some food left to eat it was good. We also had a horse with us and we said to ourselves that should the situation get critical, we’d kill the horse and eat it. But it was getting too cold and so we descended and sought out the guerrilla group that was the nearest. We approached them and they told us that they couldn’t take us with them since they were many and didn’t have any food themselves. However, they said that if we gave them our horse, they would be happy since at least they could slaughter it and have some food. But they couldn’t take us on board.”