Milan Pavlů

"The technicians that we were at the factory, we took turns. We supervised the gate keepers and the security of the whole factory, that was contractual. Just on August 21, I was on gatekeeper duty, and now all of a sudden, we're supposed to hide the guns, locked in a special compartment. There were several machine guns, rifles, submachine guns. I was there alone, so I asked a friend who was working overtime to help me. I picked up the keys at the gate and we put all the weapons in the sewer, where it was dry, and we didn't tell anyone where it was. We were ordered to do it from the defence in Liberec. We hid them and nothing happened. Nobody from the Special Branch asked any questions. Then the communists had some general meeting in the city, and one of them stood up and reminded us that the weapons had being managed in the Autopark and nobody knew where they were. He said our names, said we had stored them and God knows what we were going to do with them. That was for imprisonment. But fortunately, the person who had given me the order stood up and said it was okay. That saved us."

"I remember there were new rifles in the barn on the hay wagon. They were from Turnov from the soldiers. The Sokol asked for the allocation of rifles at that time, there could have been twenty of them and a thousand rounds of ammunition. The men were then sent to the forests of Ještěd to clear them of Germans. And then there was a German garrison on Ještěd. The mayor of Sokol and a member of the committee went in front of our soldiers, because the Germans had a machine gun there and they were equipped. They went as if they wanted to drink beer, they were quite eloquent, they handed out cigarettes, and in the meantime they captured the one who was guarding the machine gun and secured the other weapons that the Germans had stored in the corridor. This brought Ještěd under their control. Two days later Liberec was liberated."