František Pavelka

“We had not been given anything to eat at all during that time. We were as hungry as wolves. At night between Saturday and Sunday we stopped in Oranienburg. An order was shouted: ´Alles raus!´ Everybody get out! We were told to form lines of ten people, and we began marching into a dark forest, and we thought they would shoot us there and that would be the end. We were terrified. But eventually, after about half an hour of walking, we suddenly stopped in front of a high wall and there was a gate with a sign: Arbeit macht frei. We knew that this was probably a concentration camp. We entered through this gate. Inside there was a place where all prisoners were being counted three times every day. It was huge, and we were ordered to stand at that place, and we were standing there from midnight till the morning. In the morning we were told to move to a wooden barrack. As we were passing through the door, we all had to surrender our suitcases, money, watches. And if somebody had rings or jewellery, they had to remove it. Then they shaved our heads, we had to undress and take a shower and then we were issued prisoners’ uniforms. Those were some old officers’ uniform. They didn’t care about the sizes. They all told us: ´You will then exchange it among yourselves later and find the size that fits you.´ We all got dressed somehow. When we were together, and there were about one hundred and fifty of us, we were taken to one wooden barrack.”

“There was a doctor in a white coat, who came to us and said: ´Whoever is sick and doesn’t feel well, raise your hand.´ We were scared. Unable to work – they would shoot us or what not. Nobody raised his hand, nobody at all. He said: ´You Czech swines. So you are all healthy? I’ll examine you now.´ He was selecting people. He said: ´I need to have twenty-five.´ He selected twenty-five persons out of the great number of us. And to our great surprise, those twenty-five people went home the following day. They were released. He declared them sick and they went home. We thought: ´Well, now we’ve missed something.´ This was at the beginning. At the beginning we didn’t work. Doctor Sekanina, a lawyer from Prague who was interned there, came to us and told us: ´Boys, I greet you and welcome you here and I warn you: Nobody has left the camp in less than three months. Take that into account.´ – ´But what for? We haven’t done anything.´ – ´Well, that’s the way it is, you have to deal with it. Nothing can be done about it.´ Doctor Sekanina later died there. They didn’t make us work. So far we were not working. We were just there... We found out that in case we began working, we would need to know German well above all. We needed to improve upon that. And then we would need some craftsmanship. We knew that our secondary schools and universities have taught us many things, but we didn’t have any skills.”

“Those who were by the window found out that we were heading in the direction of Třebová and on to Prague. We expected that if nothing happened, we would be released in Prague and go home. But when we arrived in Prague, I could already see out of the window a little bit, and what I saw was absolutely terrible. There were students from Prague. They had been beaten. It was wet and muddy at the airport in Ruzyně. Some of them were covered in blood, some were only in their pajamas, some barefooted and so on. Other train cars were attached to the train and the Prague students had to get on. The train was now complete. When it started moving, we knew that we were going to Germany.”

“They released me from the concentration camp and I returned home. I went to Olomouc, of course, and I had to report to the Gestapo station there every Saturday. It was from January till March, and in March they asked me: ´Do you have any girlfriend?´ I said: ´Yes, I do.´ – ´Since when?´ – ´Since my student years.´ – ´Within a week you will report that you got married so that you don’t have time to think of counterrevolutions and coups and such anymore.´ I said: ´Fine, not a bad idea.´ And so I went home and told them that I had been ordered to marry. And really, I we got marriage on April 30th. We are just about to celebrate our seventieth anniversary. And this was all done on the order of that rascal.”

“To conclude I would like to say one more thing. When the communist dictatorship ended in 1989, we got rid of the dictatorship and we began to live in democracy. We had democracy, but we didn’t know how to live democratically and we still don’t know it. The whole nation confused democracy with anarchy and though that everything was allowed. They began stealing whatever they could. Banks, shops, and such, but not only this, but they were robbing us, the citizens, and they are still doing it. We can never be certain, not at night, not during the day, not at home or on the streets. The situation is very serious. For Masaryk once said: ´Only the nation that observes the basic principles of morality can be happy.´ And what are those principles? You find them in Ten Commandments. You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, honour your father and mother. And now you see it. Take our youth. More than fifty percent of families are broken, they don’t live in proper marriage. Children living on the street. Smoking, drinking, taking drugs. And such is the future of the Czech nation. Dear friends: we need to realize that we all are sons and daughters of Czech fathers and Czech mothers. We form a Czech family. We need to love each other. And help each other. We need to build some order together. A society where there is justice, honesty, safety and where all help one another. If we succeed in having good families and educating our children and so on, then we shall form a nation and state where not only us, old people, will be happy, but also and above all our children. May God help us in this. Thank you.”