“We lived in Libeň three houses from the curve. When they killed Heydrich, the Germans were here all the time. Each night a motorcycle with a sidecar went past, they wore green gum uniforms, military gendarmerie, punching in the door with gun-stocks. They searched every single apartment. They had their bayonets installed; they were banging in the yard and you had to open fast. The used their bayonets to throw books out of libraries; as if there was a tramp hidden in behind."
“At first sight he suffered from nothing at all. He looked like a huge man, a farmer maybe. We were supposed to carry him, load him up and carry. He was the heaviest man I´ve ever carried in my life. When he figured out we were to carry him, he just stood up and ran away. Then we caught him, but could not get him to carry. As we were struggling and fighting, finally we bonded him with our belts to the stretcher. That way we drove to the Bulovka hospital, where luckily there was twelve ambulance assistants waiting for us.“
“A horse walked in the middle of the street in Libeň and a Russian officer was stumbling behind him. Totally wracked he was. The officer noticed me; he had a gun and wore no hat. Well suddenly he noticed me. He was really loaded. As he approached me, he said:,You German.‘ I had a gun as I was guarding the castle in Libeň, and moreover I wore Luftschutz uniform, so I had to appear really suspicious to those Russians. I had no clue what I should do. The Russian pulled out his riffle. The worst thing was that he could not lift his hand as much as he was drunk, so he was pointing his gun in the area of my genitals. And when it got worse, the horse he was holding onto, began to walk again. The officer got scared, let me go and let the horse drag him along again. Well I got really releaved. The horse was totally cool.“
Full recordings
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Sokolovna v Praze Michli, byt pamětníka, 20.04.2012
Oldřich Kafuněk was born on 4 April, 1928 in Lysá nad Labem. At the age of ten he joined the scouting unit and later became one of his leaders. In 1947 he participated in the international scouting jamboree (meeting) in France. During WW2 he lived together with his family in Prague-Kobylisy and experienced search for the assailants of Reinhard Heydrich, the deputy Reich´s Protector. At the end of war he served at the civilian defence, so called Luftschutz, and later as a volunteer at the Prague Revolution Guards battalion. As a guard he served during the execution of Karl Hermann Frank in Prague - Pankrác in 1946. At the beginning of the 1950s he studied biology at the Charles University’s Faculty of Science, but shortly before his graduation was expelled for political reasons. In the 1950s and 1960s he worked at the Research Institute for Pharmacy and Biochemistry. In 1964 he married; he met his wife as a volleyball coach. His last permanent residence was at the Sokolovna in Prague- Michle, where he worked as a building manager since 1973. He is a father of two children and a grandfather of four grandchildren. His lifelong hobbies include scouting, sports and weapons. A longtime member of the Prague Dixieland, where he played a jazz trumpet. The witness died on June 17, 2017.
