František Nejedlý

"We got on a train in Zábřeh and got off in Most. They drove us to cabins there. They threw us a sack: 'Go and stuff it; straw is over there!' So, we stuffed it, and they threw us blankets. We spent, I think, about two weeks there. And we did not know what was going on. Some of them said – I don´t know if it was true or not – that we were waiting for wagons to transport us to the Soviet Union. In reality, the ones preceding us had been sent there."

"It was fun there. Russians were there and they were cooking soup in our large steamer pot in which we cooked potatoes. They had a slaughtered cow there. It was the first time I tasted borsch."

"He was a terrible man. That Slovak speech of his, and the way he kept sticking his stick on his boots. He was playing a hero, but when he went to the latrine at night, the guard had to go with him. He could not go alone. He had a big dog, and somebody bathed it in the toilet. He then came to him in the quarters. There was much ado then and we all had to clean it all up but we wished him all that. He came with the Soviet army and always told us that he was fighting in Slovakia and that we do not even know what it was and that he would show us. So he did. In winter we always had to get undressed to underweat and barefoot walking in the snow rolling down in the snow. It actually cured me. When I was a civil person, I've had angina every now and then, but never again after since then."

"I marched to the army at the beginning of September (1951 - ed.) and they dragged us to Most, where we were staying in the barracks and kept waiting. It was terrible. Beside me slept a Baptist, who was beaten badly there because he cut off the buttons with those little swords. He wanted no weapon. We were there for a month, and nothing ever happened, and finally we found out that wagons had to be pulled there to remove us as unwanted persons from the Soviet Union. But the wagons never arrived, so in order not to keep us there unnecessarily, they drove us away. The first stop was working at the barracks in Bílina. There it was all so merry. We got a gipsy there who fed the pigs and a mayor used to check him. The Gypsy used to collect the newspaper, the Red Law, and fed it to the pigs. The Major asked him what kind of stupid thing it was, and he replied he was giving them political training."

"He was like a chariot. He first served in Poland, actually in Russia. There he was for a short time, then went to Vienna and then to France, where he got captured, and went to England, where he served to a certain lord until the end of the war. Then he wondered if he should return. My mother did not want to go there, so we stayed here and my father lived in Germany. After February 1948, my sister escaped to join him. She emigrated and now lives in Australia."