Peter Klepsch

“We were kind of lethargic. Well, I definitely was. I was completely numb. After that I wasn’t afraid of anything. Jaro told me that I kept asking about my relatives and he just kept saying: ‘They’re dead already.’”

“That was Captain Langer. Captain Langer was an expert tinsmith in Žatec and he was also in Postoloprty and went up to Marek, saying he wanted to die, that he’s an officer and can’t stand it any more and wants a coup de grâce. And then Marek said, I can hear it today: ‘What, you want a mercy shot? Here you go!’ And then he raised his pistol and shot him in the crown of his head. I saw that.”

“On 3 June my sister came up to my bed and said: ‘Go out in the square right now, or they’ll shoot you!’ And then Czech soldiers rode up on white horses with whips and drove us out to the Žatec square, at the time it was a market. There all the Žatec Germans had been gathered and over the day they had to leave in convoys for Postoloprty. I was in one of those convoys. In Postoloprty, the first shots from the Czech soldiers rang out. On the third day we all had to line up and say what political leanings we had, were we in the army or Hitlerjugend, SA, SS or elsewhere. And I put my hand up and said I’d been politically persecuted. And later Mr Marek came up and interrogated me and I said: ‘What kind of treatment is this, I was a victim of the Nazis.’ and then Marek hit me with his stick, it was a bamboo cane. But later they did take me outside along with twelve others and we were treated differently till the end of the week.”

“At the beginning nothing. On Wednesday fifteen people got one piece of bread.” – “And to drink?” – “To drink? I know that a day or two earlier, for Captain Schön, that was my first battery commander in the anti-aircraft defence that I knew. And he sent me to a trench with his hat for some water. And so I brought him a hat full of water. I can remember that clearly. I didn’t drink any myself, because there were body parts floating about in that trench.”

“I didn’t know any of them, maybe in passing. I only knew that two were supposedly brothers and that they were all still very young, they were probably the youngest of everyone who was included in the march. I expect they ran away out of hunger and were caught. And then he came… I can still hear Marek, saying: ‘Anyone who runs away will get shot, just like we’re now going to shoot these five boys.’ I experienced that. Marek. And that’s after he talked with this Czech officer. He was probably ordered by the officer to tell us that now. He lined the boys up to the south, no the north wall of the barracks and assigned one gunman to each boy. I only know they shot one in the neck and a stream of blood sprayed out one or two metres away. One called out for his mother, I saw that too.”

“Some people I saw and some of them I buried. That is, some of the people who were shot in the barracks courtyard, those I buried. There was – who was it who was there with me? Captain Langer was there with me and also this goldsmith was with us. I used to know him, but I’ve forgotten his name for now. In the courtyard there were twelve to fifteen people, from what I saw, who were being buried. And for two or three of them I did my part as a gravedigger.”

“I saw them murder the postal assistant Heinz (or I don’t remember what his name was). I saw that. He came late and somehow they shot him in the square. And he lay there and bled out. I saw that. Ganzel was the name of that postal assistant, I just remembered.” – “That march to Postoloprty, how long did it take?” – “There was a break in between. We stopped to rest down at the station or close by the station and there they took all our watches or any valuables we had on us. And they told us we wouldn’t be needing them any more. I know that even today. And one neighbour, he was the Žatec goldsmith, he had a bag of diamonds in his pocket that he hid in a molehill. I saw that. And that person survived and my son met him in Forchheim after the war.”

“Another thing I know is that Dr. Hassberger was there, the criminal assistant, I remember that name. The interrogation was actually quite mild. Once I got a slap when they asked me what party I belonged to before 1933. I said: ‘To the Kindergarten!’ which was completely true, right? And then they slapped me. But otherwise the Gestapo weren’t especially cruel to me.”