“I even had cigarettes in my briefcase and was supposed to hand them over to someone in Karlovice. The Germans had stopped me on the way, had me open the briefcase and obviously, saw cigarettes. There were packs of 100 cigarettes, I don’t recall how many of those. My dad had to go to the customs office and then the thing went as far as to the local court in Ostrava. I and daddy were summoned there. We slept over at the old woman’s in Karlovice right across the station. We overslept and missed our train. It must have been God’s making because there was an airstrike on Ostrava that day, the court was hit by shells and all of the paperwork has been lost. We may have even died there, had we made it on time.”
“I was even smuggling cigarettes, daddy gave them to me. I was to bring them to somebody in the village, and the Germans caught me. Obviously they took them away from me. Daddy had to go to the customs house to write a protocol, and they sent it to Amtsgericht to Ostrava and we were summoned to go to Ostrava with Daddy. But, I don’t know whether to thank God or Fate for it, we went to sleep in my grandma’s place. We planned to sleep there and then take a four o’clock train to Ostrava. We missed the train and it left without us. An air raid on Ostrava came that day. They destroyed the Amtsgericht, everything was destroyed and there was nothing left. Thus by not having gone there we saved ourselves.”
“When I went home from school, daddy told me: ‘Go with your briefcase to the railway station.’ This was in the afternoon, at around 2 p.m. ‘A young man will approach you and you will take him home. But be careful not to get caught by the Germans!’ A boy then came from the station and asked me: ‘Are you waiting for me?’ I replied: ‘Yes.’ I was sixteen years old back then. ‘Let’s go, then’. From the station we went all the way to Tísňavy and then through Dolina. Fortunately, we haven’t met the Germans up until the borderland forests. But just there by our neighbors’ there were two Germans with a dog.”
“It was in 1940 or 1941 at Christmas time. Daddy brought in six people. They were Jews and it was just on Christmas Eve. They had some refreshments, ate something and then daddy brought them through the barracks to Pančava where he handed them over to someone. I don’t know where they then went. We waited at home for daddy to come to have Christmas dinner. He returned at ten o’clock. I waited for him with mummy but the younger ones had fallen asleep without eating, not waiting to see daddy.”
“The partisans were to destroy the customs house in Tiesňavy. In the evening they came to my father, asking him to guide them to Tiesňavy. So he led them to that customs house. My father even helped to cut the wires. There was a gunfight. I don’t know whether they shot some Germans. The gunfight must have been pretty bad. The partisans withdrew. They walked by our house. Daddy was at home. Half an hour later the Germans came, asking if someone had been there. Dad was just about to go to the field to scythe oat. He told them: ´Nobody was in our place. But I saw some men, they went that way.´ And he pointed to the opposite direction... Daddy’s face was completely pale.”
“The partisans weren’t in these houses all the time. They would just come, eat something and leave. In our place they never met with the Germans, with the border patrol. If they had, we wouldn’t have gotten away with it. That’s clear. It would have been terrible then. They would have burnt the whole place down.”
“Daddy served as a messenger for partisans. He told me: ´Go to the railway station and a man or boy will join you there. You will bring him here. Be careful not to get caught by the Germans.´ I was standing there, the clue was that I was carrying a schoolbag. A young boy came. He was a bit older than me. He came and greeted me and said: ´We can go.´ I said: ´OK.´ We passed through the station building and right behind the station we took a path toward the forest and we walked to our house. We took the forest path, because I knew that the German border patrol didn’t pass through there and that we would not meet anybody there. We came home. But as we were approaching the house we didn’t pass by the neighbours’ house, but we continued through the forest. And right by the Pastucha’s house there were Germans standing, with a dog. But I took the path, and the boy walked through the forest, which was somewhat behind a hill. So he did pass through. We crossed the border and my Mom just happened to be grazing heifers there. We stopped there and he came to us. We gave him something to eat and then Dad led him to Štiavnik to the partisans.”
“With Daddy we were to bring some ten or fifteen heifers to the railway station in Karlovice, and from there they were to be sent further by train. I and Daddy thus drove these cows over the fields and meadows, through Podťaté. And when we reached Podťaté, a fire opened. Partisans wanted to get from Štiavnik to Moravia. But the Germans had somehow learned about it and from these customs houses they came by cars to Podťaté and to Lopušánky. And we came right into this fire. We left the cows in a garden in Světlá. It also belonged to that cooperative of herders. We hid in the cellar there. When the shooting ceased, the Germans left and the partisans had to retreat, because their border crossing failed. After that, we continued with the cows to the railway station in the village. And some two or three weeks later they repeated this attempt at crossing the border, but this time they went through Bumbálka, and they managed it.”
Marie Kantorová (Bartošková) was born in 1928 in the hamlet of Orsákovice near Soláň in Nový Hrozenkov, but she spent the major part of her childhood in the hamlet of Stodolisko under Velký Javorník, the highest mountain in the mountain range of the same name. It was a remote settlement which was very far from the nearest village. Before the war their cottage also served as a tourist lodge. Due to its location right on the border with Slovakia, which gained independence in March 1939, the house was also used by smugglers crossing the border. The Slovak National Uprising broke out at the end of August 1944 and many Czechs were coming to support it. Messengers familiar with the terrain were needed for these illegal border crossings. Marie, who was sixteen at that time, was also helping to guide persons over the border. She has led four partisans-to-be over the border. Her father, Josef Bartošek, cooperated with the partisans in all possible ways and he also took part in one raid in Tiesňava. There were many partisans and German border patrols up in the Javorníky Mountains, and Marie Kantorová witnessed more than one gunfight.
During the war she studied at a school of agriculture in Velké Karlovice and then she attended a family school run by the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross in Holešovice. In the second year of her studies she took a course for lay teachers of religious education, and she was then teaching the subject in schools in the area of Třemešek near Oskava in northern Moravia, until religious education was abolished in 1954. After that she worked as a shop assistant. At present Marie Kantorová still lives in Třemešek with her husband Vilém Kantor, whom she already knew during the war, because he had also been cooperating with the 1st Czechoslovak brigade of Jan Žižka and he often stopped in the Bartošek family’s house when crossing the border.
Velké Karlovice-Podťaté valley. 1st Czechoslovak partisan group of Jan Žižka crossed to Moravia in this place (Marie was accidentally present there, too)
Velké Karlovice-Podťaté valley. 1st Czechoslovak partisan group of Jan Žižka crossed to Moravia in this place (Marie was accidentally present there, too)
photo: PŘIKRYL, J. 1. čs. partyzánská brigáda Jana Žižky:(srpen-listopad 1944). Ostrava: Profil, 1976.
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