"Well, we didn't see the tanks, but the scared people told us: 'There will be a war,' in Polish: 'Bude vojna.' We did not believe it. Later it was understandable, because there was no more control at the border. I bought some vodka there, it was going to be checked, it was not allowed to be transported. Well, it was cheaper there, so I bought it, and they didn't check at the border between Poland and the Czech Republic anymore. They let the Poles know that they were going to go in and that's what they did. It was Germans from the north, some two or three days there were also from the GDR and Russki, and there were a lot of Poles from that area. They had a sign saying 'They won't go through the Náchod gate', I have so many photographs from that time as well, what was behind the shop windows in Náchod and so on. I think they are also quite rare things, because I photographed a lot of those shop windows and leaflets. Well, they were saying: 'They won't go through the Náchod gate.' No way, the tanks broke down the walls and drove over the companies."
"There were morning, afternoon and night shifts. That's when I remember the second year, after two years of service, there was an uprising or revolution in Hungary. So they only sent us on night shifts and they guarded us with purple caps too, the Internal Guard guarded us, well, they didn't trust us."
"That was very dismal because I was actually the principal witness. In January 1945, it was arranged that I should go there to testify. My brother and I went to what was called the afternoon Sunday School, and the services were in the morning and that was in the afternoon. They came to arrest Pastor Kadlec and they were late and they didn't catch him at the end of the service. He was already at home eating lunch and a friend who was going there from the other end from such a solitary house, he went there to tell him that soldiers were advancing from three sides. And the pastor in his slippers ran away and slipped away from them. We met him, he was walking in those slippers through the ditch. They were already threatening to shoot every tenth person there if the pastor escaped like that. He escaped through some Lamplots to other villages, through Krásné, the Catholic parish office, all the way to Samotín. Later, we saw each other twice during the Protectorate, so I already knew what to say and what not to say. I told this Josef Šulc at Mayor Kamenský's house that we met him, but not that he was going through the ditch, but along the road, and not that he was going to the right, but that he was going to the left, where they covered it with branches and similarly disguised the tracks. They didn't have dogs, the Germans, that was one advantage. Then they sort of believed me and let me go."
Josef Kostelecký was born on 31 March 1934 in Polička. He lived with his mother Růžena, father Josef and two younger brothers Milan and Pavel in the nearby village of Telecí. During the Protectorate, together with others, he took care of an escaped prisoner and personally brought him food. He witnessed a dramatic situation in which an evangelical pastor narrowly escaped arrest by the Gestapo and the unfortunate event when his younger brother was drowning. In his childhood, he was often ill and found himself in direct danger of his life during a severe scarlet fewer. He went through several schools and trained as a gardener, a repairer of agricultural machinery and a miner. Because of his occupation and activities, he got into minor trouble with the ruling establishment of the time. For his behaviour he was assigned to the Technical Battalions (formerly the Technical auxiliary battalion) at the recruitment for the compulsory military service, working in difficult conditions in the mines in Karviná and later in Kladno, where he suffered a spinal injury. He moved from Mikulov to Boskovice and worked at the Ovoce a zelenina (Fruit and Vegetables) company. In 1964 he married Milada Filipiová and they had two sons, Tomáš (1965) and Petr (1967). In August 1968 he was on a trip to Poland with pupils from several schools and after the occupation had to organise the difficult return home of all the participants. At that time, he was already working as a teacher at the Agricultural Vocational School, but in 1978 he left for the Secondary Agricultural Technical School. During the vetting process, he reluctantly signed he agrees with the entry of Warsaw Pact troops in order to stay in education. At the age of 50, he graduated from the Faculty of Economics and Management at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague. His two sons personally took part in the student demonstration of 17 November 1989. In the period after the fall of communism he was also involved in politics, being one of the founding members of the then newly formed Christian Democratic Party. The family maintained contacts with expelled German families and visited each other. Throughout his life he has played the trombone, heligon and tuba in the local brass band, has sung in the Janáček choir, took up photography, has been an active member of the gardeners’ association and tried to work in the evangelical parish congregation in Boskovice, where he was, among other things, a curator (lay leader). In 2023 he lived with his wife Milada in Boskovice.
