Božetěch Kostelka

"The Russian soldiers got into the yard and we were there in the dressing room. We ran out and before our eyes the machine gunner who had resisted for so long was shot on the spot. And when we brought them, those soldiers, a drink, first we had to drink and then they had to drink. And they went on into town. But they shot him on the spot in front of us, the German machine gunner who was defending the entrance from the garden to the yard of the Catholic house. "

"The Orel resistance activity was only uncovered at the end of 1944. And as part of this operation, my father was also arrested. The work in the Orel resistance was based on the so-called triad system. Each person only knew two others. They certainly knew each other from Orel activities, but not from this [resistance] activity. At the end of 1944, a large wave of arrests of Orel officials began here in Moravia. They were transferred for interrogations to Ostrava, then from Ostrava to Breslau, which is today’s Wrocław. There, executions started relatively soon. However, many of these triads did not betray each other, so the executions were not as widespread. What saved my father was that none of the three revealed the identity of the others. Then, as the Red Army approached Breslau and the front drew near, the German captors decided to take some of the prisoners with them, heading through the Protectorate to Germany. Their plan was to surrender to the Americans while holding the prisoners as hostages. My father survived the transfer to Bayreuth. The Americans liberated Bayreuth under the condition that the Germans first lead the prisoners out of the city before the attack began. The attack itself lasted only about an hour. In the end, the Germans surrendered to the American forces during the liberation of Bayreuth."

“My first scouting campsite was with the scouts from Brno in Hanušovice. The leaders of Brno group provided accommodation at the school premises. It was called Kopřivná near Hanušovice. Local people had to leave the place and the only Czech family left remained, which resettled there. Beyond Hanušovice was a camp, where the Red army deserters were concentrated and there was the Czech crew to guard it, but that was an impossible task, and so some of the refugees escaped anyway and kept wondering around. Once they assaulted the Czech family. They were looking for liquor and murdered the whole family instead. The guard was searching for them, but had no authority over them, so they got returned back. Although it was a scouting camp, we mainly wondered around the neighbourhood discovering the nature that was infested by weapons. Stuff from German families were there too; boxes and gun patrons, pistols and hand grenades. The older ones were watching over us to hand everything over, and they were then passing it over to the soldiers, who had a crew in Hanušovice.”

“There they divided us in sections, that went down the mines, and I was assigned to a section that then went to Ostrava. Then I was there for the last time before we were released back to civilian life. In the Ostrava area I got in the old mines in Silesian Ostrava, where the power of the coal seam was 70, not more than 80 centimeters, so we worked lying down all the time only using very short shovels because we threw the material behind our necks. That was an unpleasant job indeed. I had a special experience there. The two, who were with us during the shift, forgot the tools in the mining wall, so called ´fedruck´, as they used to say in Ostrava, and when we went back to the elevator they remembered and wanted to go back. We tried to talk them out of the idea saying it was worthless, but they still went there. We were up the mine, another shift went in and found them both suffocated to death. Our whole shift was shuffled to different other mines in Ostrava within two days, so that we could not bear any witness to the accident. But to this day I do not know how the families coped. We did not find it from the auxiliary troops union. Military authorities somehow camouflaged the whole event. They probably wrote they died fulfilling military duties.”

„In 1990 the activities of Orel were renewed. There was a meeting with the representatives and of course they found my father´s name in the records. They found out that the father died meanwhile and my mother kept living in her brother´s flat so there still was a contact. The representatives said that I could come and help out. When I retired in 1991 I began helping with administrative works at the central and with renewing a kind of physical educational activities, obviously not with the kit, as those somersaults and grand circle swings were difficult to realise. More or less the gro of my job was in the field of ball games, preparation of basketball or volleyball. But later I helped the teams in unions regarding basketball training of youth.”