Josef Kolečko

"I was already dressed when they told me to come with them and off we went. I couldn’t take anything with me. I had to take everything out of my pockets. That was all. They put me into a cell and didn’t speak to me at all."

"That was the guy who introduced me to the Young Social Democrats when I was fifteen. The Social Democratic Party had a very strong position in Třemošná and in the whole Pilsen region. It was the strongest party in the country, and especially in the Pilsen region. The town had Socialist Democrat mayors during the war as well as during the entire period of the First Republic. I talked to this Rudolf Nováček on the train, and sure enough, when I was sixteen I became a member of the district committee of the Young Social Democrats because of him."

"When we were transported to Bamberg, all of us who had been sentenced to four years – there were several of us – were sent to solitary confinement for half a year. It didn’t affect those who got three and a half years, but those who got four had to go through that. It was tough. We were separating clothes from killed soldiers who had died in hospitals. The clothes had been removed from the bodies, processed in some cleaning facility and we were supposed to separate torn and intact pieces which would be later sawn together, and discard what couldn’t be used anymore. It was bad. When we were released from there half a year later, we were not even allowed to send any letters – except one, to write that we were in Bamberg, and that was all. We were not allowed to write or receive any letters."

"When I arrived to Buchenwald, my friends and people who knew me were already there. I found out that Venca Koča was there – he had arrived a week or two weeks before me – and he had been told about me. I came in and when they were selecting prisoners for work, a guy whom I have never seen in my life comes to me. He was from Pilsen, Jirka Žák was his name, and he was working for the camp labour office, which was a very important position because they were deciding on each prisoner's workplace. He asks me: ´Hey, where did you work before?´- ´In the Škoda factory in Pilsen.´ - ´No, you are a room leader. Don’t tell them that you are a skilled worker. You will work in the barracks. "

"But then came the May and we were done for. On May 29 they arrested whomever they could get hold of, not just in Pilsen, but all over the country, except Moravia. As I learnt later in prison, the last wave of arrests in Pilsen took place in September. That was the last one and by then they had basically destroyed our youth organization. We were interrogated in Pilsen and some of us in Klatovy. The people from Domažlice were interrogated in Klatovy as well, and then they were all taken to Pilsen. In Pilsen we were in single solitary confinement cells, but two or three others came there soon after."

"The decision to continue as an illegal movement was made quite early; in March, which for us made since April. Once illegal, we would be organizing independent resistance against the Germans. Obviously, nor us nor them had any experience. Groups of three were established within regions and districts. They were independent and they were linked to somebody from the regional level, but they often did not know about each other."