Ing. Adolf Klein

„Ta diskriminace mezi Čechy a Němci, tu jsme cítili na každém roku, například v tom 44 roce, když začalo vyučování, tak už v průběhu září se otevřeli dveře a nějaký učitel zavolal:‚L15!‘ a my jsme věděli, že je to Luftwaffe meldung, že to jsou bombardovací letadla vzdálená 15 minut od Poličky, no a utíkali jsme do krytu. Zatímco němečtí žáci, ti už měli L20, když byli 20 minut vzdálenost od Poličky, tak oni už šli do krytu. My až teprve 15 minut.“

Jednou můj otec byl na nějaké obchodní cestě, nebyl doma, a moje mamka byla doma a já jsem byl doma a přišel k nám tehdejší šéf toho landrátu, jmenoval se Šmaler a s ním přišli ještě nějací lidé a začali sepisovat nábytek a jiné věci. A moje matka říká: „Můžu se Vás, pane Šmaler zeptat, co to děláte?‘ A on ji říká: ‚No jste přeci židi, ne?‘ A moje matka říká: ‚To ne!‘ a šla do kasy, otevřela kasu a vyndala to potvrzení, že můj otec není žid. Ukázala to panu Šmalerovi a pan Šmaler se omluvil a řekl: „Paní Kleinová, ale já vám musím něco říct, Polička má sedm tisíc obyvatel, ale podle počtu udání jich má dvakrát tolik. To si děláte vy Češi sami!“

“I had come to Scouting even before I was able to join, because it was during the war. We had our club, modeled on Foglar’s boy clubs from the magazine Mladý Hlasatel, which followed the principles of Scouting. When the war ended, ´Soviets´ arrived to Polička on May 9, and on May 11, our boys’ group from our club joined the Boy Scout troop in Polička. Officially, I have thus been a Boy Scout since May 11, 1945. The situation at that time was peculiar. You can’t imagine what war is like, you know it from films and books, but personal experience and learnt knowledge are two different things. Contrary to my expectations, I joined the Boy Scouts on the 11th, and already on the 12th we all got some tasks. I – an eleven-year-old boy at that time – was helping in the grammar school building, where a centre of people who organized things in the restored Czechoslovakia was set up. Since the war front collapsed in front of Polička, ´national guests´ were coming to the town and retreating through Polička. They were German Poles, who – partly willingly and party unwillingly – were escaping the Soviet army with their families and all they had, with some meager property on wagons. The end of the war met them in Polička. They had no money, and the local administration in Polička therefore organized what we would today call humanitarian aid. I was involved in it as one of the least significant persons – I was cutting paper food ration stamps, which were then distributed to these refugees. It was no important activity, but we had to prove ourselves and we were responsible for this.”

“We held a big summer camp. We constructed the wooden tent bases ourselves, we obtained tent canvases, and we already had sizeable property. We had our camp in Sluneční údolí (Sunny Valley), which is in Křižánky, near Milovy. And while we were there, we received the news – certain official arrived there with proclamation from brother Plajner, whereby he immediately ordered us to disband the camp, and announced that the Scouting organization now had to cease its activity and become re-incorporated into the youth organization…I don’t remember the details precisely, I only remember that I promised that I would cancel the camp immediately, and that although Scout always speaks the truth, we continued and ran the camp till the end.”

“When we organized the camp in Křižánky, we knew that there was an abandoned mine there. The mine consisted of a horizontal passage about 100 metres long. We planned to prepare a test of courage for the Scouts there. It was at night, in a deep forest, one of us was in charge of the group of children who were getting ready, and they would pass through the mine one by one, reach the end, find their name written on a piece of paper using a flashlight, and go out – and thus pass the test of courage. One of us stood at the beginning of the passage and was sending the children in, and the other one was at the other end, because we didn’t know what the children’s reaction would be, and the third leader was outside where he was gathering the kids who have already passed the test. I still remember the girl’s name – Vrabcová. She came out, and she was so stressed out from the passage through the darkness... I unsuspectingly took her hand, and told her: ´Come here to the left.´ But she wrenched her hand from mine because I scared her, and then we could only hear cracking of twigs as she was running through the forest. The test of courage was over, because there was a precipice above the Svratka River about 50 metres high, and we started looking for her. We couldn’t find her, and it seemed that she got killed somewhere (...) I was desperate, because it was me who scared her. Fortunately somebody later found her.”