Pavel Jež

* 1925  †︎ 2015

Veteran of WW2, western front
1. 9. 1939 - The outbreak of the WW2
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    The Munich Dictate

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    duration: 00:56
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    "When Hitler rose to power in 1933, the Poles signed a non-aggression pact with him in 1934, and then they helped him pick the republic apart, like I said - but not all of them. Everything has its beginning, just as every bomb has its load and its fuse, so the fuse of the First World War was the Assassination in Sarajevo, and the fuse of World War II was the Munich Dictate."

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    Young people aren't afraid

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    duration: 00:35
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    "I wasn't afraid, I was proud. A young person doesn't think like that, I was among my own. The Soviet invasion had begun, I was nineteen years old when I joined the Czechoslovak Army."

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    Heroes in France

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    duration: 00:53
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    "In my nineteen years of age we were considered heroes in France. The metro, the theatre, museums we had for free. One time we were walking under the Eiffel Tower with a friend, and we met two young ladies. When we got talking, they found out we were from Czechoslovakia, and they invited us to lunch - she was the daughter of the Czechoslovak ambassador."

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    From the Germans to the Allies

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    duration: 00:37
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    "I deserted to the Allies when I found myself in between the fronts, that is both the Germans and the English were shooting. A tank drove out on to a meadow, I ran up in front of it, put my hands up, a sergeant got out [unintelligible] and all the Germans stood behind us. Then they took me to Cherbourg, and the Germans they took into captivity."

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    Joining the National Socialists

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    duration: 00:34
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    "Right after the war, still a bachelor, I joined the National Socialists, that seemed to me to be kind of the ideal party. Then in 1948, the Communists came to me to try and have me spill out who all was in the party, so they could arrest them. But I talked myself out of it. I was about twenty-three or twenty-four then."

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    Třinec, 23.05.2006

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    duration: 01:12:28
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Let’s not forget that Communism wasn’t created by the Soviets, they just used it.

Pavel Jež was born in 1925 in Třinec. At seventeen years of age and as a Silesian citizen, he was drafted into the German army and sent to fight in France. Right from the start, he wanted to switch over to the Allies. Soon afterwards, he joined the Czechoslovak Foreign Army in England, a few weeks later he took part in the Normandy landings and served as a mechanic in the workshops of the transport corps. After the war, he was punished for giving his property to the local co-op too late. After 1989, he became a member of the core organisation of the Union of Freedom Fighters. He passed away on May, 19th, 2015.

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