“One was injured - a guy from Stupné, his name was Knapp. We were alright, but the German car was smashed and we killed six or seven Germans. I was at the machine gun. There was another machine gunner on the pear or cherry tree nearby, and he also died.”
“We disarmed him and lead him in front of us. I had a bike and Kukulík had one as well. We had our guns on the handlebars. In Stupné, we were joined by Karel Vatalík. And in Šebešťanová, by Behúňka. So there were four of us in our escort. We took him to Popradno. There was a little shop and the soldiers waited in front of it. Žucha’s wife was there as well, and Žucha had beaten her. I was on the watch in front of the shop. It was two weeks before the end of the war and the guy was the head of the Gestapo in Považská Bystrica. So the Ukrainians beat him up. They spoke German, so they were also interrogating him. One of the Ukrainians, his name was Vasil, was a hunk of a man. He had bad sight. During the day he could manage, but in the night they had to lead him around. He was really big and he kept slapping the officer from both sides so that his head was dangling from one side to another. Then they took him up to the headquarters and hanged him. He had a nice ring and one of the soldiers wanted to take it off. It wouldn’t come off, so he chopped the finger off. He offered it to me but I didn’t want it. It was disgusting.”
“One evening in the pub, he came from somewhere near Považská Bystrica and he had a pistol and a machine gun. And he told the others about shooting from machine guns and opening fire in the lime works and they all listened with awe. Then he started speaking about Czechs and he said: ‘If I wanted, I would have shot the Czech swine as well.’ That made me angry and I wanted to draw my gun but Ignač Šebik, a friend of mine, stopped me. Then he took me outside, and in the end I was happy it ended this way because otherwise my family would be in trouble.”
“There was a Jewish cemetery surrounded from all sides by a wall. So the Germans fortified there and took out the machine guns. They also captured some women, children, and some men and locked them in a barn right opposite the graveyard. They threatened that they would set the barn on fire if anyone attacked them. There was a young partisan among the captured, his name was Rovmanik, and he said: ‘Whatever happens, I’m going to get out of here.’ He opened the gate and was shot right into the head. Then the shooting began. As the barn was open, the graveyard was under heavy gunfire from each side. The Germans tried to run away but they were shot. And those who were caught by the Russians... It was a like shambles. They took revenge and slaughtered them like cattle.”
“In Považská Bystrica, I saw an old Jewish lady, her name was Bichler, sitting on an old armchair. She was already about ninety years old. Two members of the Guard took her, each from one side and lifted her to the lorry, which was already full of other people – Jews of all ages. And then they took them to Žilina and shot them.”
“Jožo Kukulík helped the partisans and he brought some grenades home. He had a house and a small cabin in the garden, shaded by a pear tree. The leaves from the tree had fallen down to the ground and he didn’t have a better idea than to hide the grenades under the leaves. He didn’t tell his wife and she went to rake the leaves. They were hand grenades with small eyelets. And when the eyelet came off, the grenade was activated and you had to throw it away before it exploded. So she pulled one of them with the rake and all the grenades went off. And as he saw her raking, he ran to the pile to warn her but it was too late. So she died and he was injured by the splinters and the Germans had to take him to a hospital in Žilina.”
Vilém Kantor was born in 1926 in Svederník, near Žilina. His parents were Moravian and they moved to Slovakia for work. After the separation of Slovakia in 1939, they became foreigners in a state that was an ally of Germany. The family was often a subject of insults and oppression from members of the Hlinka Guard. In August 1944, the Slovak National Uprising began and when it was suppressed, the fighters fled to the woods and continued in guerrilla war. Vilém Kantor joined the partisans as a supplier and informer in the area around Papradná in the Javorníky mountain range. He got into several shooting incidents with German soldiers. After the war, he went to Malé Karlovice in Moravia and later to Stará Ves near Rýmařov. Shortly after the Communist coup d’état, he was drafted into the army. During his army service, he passed a political course in Brno. In the army, he was a tutor in political matters for his unit, as well as the official of the Communist Party. He was released for health reasons after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. He recovered and graduated from forestry school. He worked as a forester in Přebuz at the German border, where he was also heading the local municipality. He remembers when the local German inhabitants smuggled goods to Eastern Germany. Later, he worked as a forester in Karlovice and in Třemešek, where he lives today with his wife Marie.
