Josef Pánek

"It was all military. The healthy went east, and the wounded went west, to the Reich. We didn't talk much to those, they were solo. We were just a kind of designated carriage, separated, and the conductor locked us in there, and when we were in Hranice, he unlocked us and said, 'Boys, now get lost, every one of you, as much as you can, so that you don't get caught.' The boys who didn't smoke and had cigarette cases would pack cigarettes, and you could get everything for cigarettes. So he got a cigarette mine and was cheering us on. Well, in those days, the train would stop if there was, like, an air raid or some damaged tracks or something... But ours was going quite well and stopped at Hranice, practically at the station in Drahotuše. And he said, 'Get lost, boys!' So we got lost, each of us, as best we could, wherever the road led."

"We played football with them. Because they [the Germans] were bored there, going from corner to corner, as we know how it is in the army. They weren't allowed to go into the town without permission, right... the boys who had a ball, a football, hidden away, took it out, and we played soccer. There was a big area where Billa stands today, open, grassy, kind of grassy, and there was a so-called (in Hranice slang) pig yard. That's where they sold cattle. If a farmer had a pig to sell, for example, he would go there, and the butcher would buy it, or whoever had money. Well, we used to play football there, and the boys had a football. That was after all the markets were over, and there was nothing to sell. They put two stones in there, those were the goals, and we played football. And the Gestapo and their kind of elite were bored at the division, so they came to see if they could play with us. So we played Germany against the Czech Republic. I don't remember how it turned out." - "And they were Gestapo, weren't they just normal soldiers?" - "Of course, there were undercover, all sorts of things. Geheime Staatspolizei, state police, Gestapo, everything. But that happened there only for about a fortnight because they were always splitting up too, some of them sent there, some of them sent elsewhere... Well, they were bored, and when they saw that we were playing football there and the end of the war was imminent, they came to see if they could play Germany against the Czech Republic." - "And how did you perceive it as children when the Germans were hated?" - "Well, we perceived it casually. We were, admittedly, such fifteen-year-olds, sixteen-year-olds, some were even older, who had failed classes, so they had more sense. We thought it was good, so whatever."