Jan Martínek

"Before we left England, we met in London with President Beneš and Jan Masaryk, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He said goodbye to us and wished us to endure until the end of the war that the war would soon be over."

"It was so calm and I thought it's a time for me to run away, and I took advantage of that moment. Of course, I had a uniform. If I had a civilian suit, it would be quite easier for me. So, I saw some civilians, I tried to get to them. I am no Germany, I am Czechoslovak! I'm not German, but I'm Czech. They could understand it, but they didn't have to. So, they took me to the barn and I sat there in the uniform for three days. They brought me food there. And those grenades, the front was so tangled there and I was waiting for it (how it would end) ... Either it shoots into the barn here - there was hay, straw - and that would be my end... I survived."

"Of course, in the meantime, my parents signed the foglist and I, without signing anything, I have a document there, so I had to join the German army. I was taken in Hlivice. After the conscription, I was on vacation and I was supposed to enlist in the German military service, and I missed the deadline again. I didn't board, so I had such problems again that they wanted to arrest me immediately and so on. But it ended up that I had to join the army again as soon as possible."

"It was not until two years later that I was given a week's vacation to go home. A week and I was supposed to go back to this place. I came home after two years, a week passed and I didn't report anywhere and I didn't go back. I had the police there in a fortnight, they immediately took me to Jablunkov to the employment office, that I had to go back immediately to the place where I worked."