Michal Kurach
* 1917 †︎ 2015
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"Then they drove me to yet another camp and there we would cut down trees. We had to chop down four cubic meters – that was a standard. Then we would get 700 grams of bread, it was such a brick, about this thick. Who didn’t meet the standard got 300 grams. We would get soup for breakfast – it was water with cod-liver oil. At six we would go to a forest and return no sooner than at seven p.m. – without any food or anything. In the evening we would again get a spoon of mush or millet or something like that and a piece of fish – that was all we lived off. And when someone didn’t meet the standard of four cubic meters, they would lock him up for night – it was freezing cold – to such a shed made from timber in which there would be such holes. Now someone could bear it but others haven’t returned from there."
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"All three brigades went to participate on Dukla operation. There was large preparation the first day, there was probably significant progress. At that time we were supposed to advance as far as to Slovakia in three months. It was not like that. During the preparation and advancement we got to some villages. It was a misty morning. Than the mist started to rise and Germans were all around above and now they opened fire. It was wild there because of the cannons. Many guys were killed there and many wounded. And it took a several days before we moved ahead again. The advance was slow as far as to our border. We crossed the border sometime on December 6th. "
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"There was a (white) flag hanging there and the civilians went to see whether it really was there. They opened fire on them. When they did so, we had one cannon and one machine-gun. There was a hayloft on a field by a village, so we put the cannon there. We started to provide support so as to allow the civilians to retreat. There I, another man who died two years ago and a girl who died a long time ago, were wounded. I got hit into the head, luckily it was not a large splinter, it stuck itself into a bone, I have a bulge there until today. I don’t know about the other man, the girl got hit by a splinter into the breasts. Because the Germans opened fire on the hayloft. It flew over to us on the other side. Those were only such small splinters, be it larger, it would have been the end. So we dropped everything – others had to fill in for us - and went to get medical treatment. There they drove us back and then examined us. Thus we missed the celebration of the end of the war – we slept it through."
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"Then they drove us to Novokhopyorsk. It was better there. In Berdychiv, we would get some water in the morning, one spoon of mashed potatoes or millet at noon and that was all. And in the evening we would get just one spoon of something. And that was food. There in Novokhopyorsk it was better already. There was such a former apartment and there were four of us prisoners in one room. Even the cooking was better there. (We stayed there) until New Year’s Eve of 1940. There they tried us for crossing the border, we received a five-year sentence. They didn’t put us back, rather they put us into a different house and from there, in January, they drove us to Pechora in a freight-train. It took us almost a month."
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Full recordings
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Praha, 13.04.2010
(audio)
duration: 58:40
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“I slept through the end-of-the-war celebration.”
Michal Kurach was born 23.6.1917 in Závada at Carpatho-Ukraine. After the Hungarian occupation in 1939, he along with several others decided to go into exile. After crossing the border, he was arrested by a Soviet watch. He was then imprisoned in several Ukrainian towns for a couple of months. In the end, in January 1941, he was in Novokhopyorsk sentenced to five years of prison for illegal border-crossing. He was to serve his sentence in camps by the river Pechora at Siberia. At first, he worked on a mine, later he worked as a timber-miner. He recalls having absolutely inappropriate clothing and food rations. On the 25.2.1943 he made use of the opportunity to join the newly-formed Svoboda’s army in Buzuluk. At first he underwent a basic military training and after his assignation to anti-aircraft artillery also a special training. He joined the front near Kyiv. He went through the whole of Eastern front - through Bila Tserkva, Dukla and Liptovský Mikuláš. In the beginning of May 1945 in Holešov, Moravia, he was wounded by a splinter. He managed to heal and participate in a defile in front of president Beneš. After the war, he settled down in Bohemia. Michal Kurach passed away on October, the 28th, 2015.