Eliška Pečenková

„Accidentally, my stepmom was a cleaner at the police station here in the Gregor’s house, there used to be a police station, there were four officers, the chief, Rychlík, and others. They caught them and they were in a car outside the house and mom, as she was about to return from the police station, there was a Gestapo officer and Chief Rychlik called the mayor because they had no such things at the police station, and told him to get some ropes and two wooden crates, and that he deliver it to the police station. Mom heard that and when she descended the stairs, there were those two young men sitting in the car. She came home crying, she said that it was something terrible. Those two were just sitting there with no idea what would happen and at the same time, they were getting the ropes and crates ready for them. Then, the two young men, they hanged that Procházka but that Sedlák was strong, he managed to get his hands untied and jumped to that ditch and wanted to escape. There was such a large farm, a manor. He would not manage to run away anyway but one of those policemen caught him and they shot him in the ditch, that Sedlák. And Procházka was left hanging there for two days as a warning. I know I used to walk past there, I was fourteen and I had finished school and I would go and help one lady with sewing, as a seamstress. I would be returning home in the evening, her husband was imprisoned in a labour camp, and she used to tell me: ‘You know what? Don’t be afraid when you walk by. Dead man won’t hurt you.’ You know, he hung there for two days, for warning.”

"He said that when he had gone there for the first time in that 1913, it was a year after the Titanic sank, that he had no passport, even. That he paid some money to some Jewish company, he arrived to Prague and they had their representatives there - he got a peaked cap with the name of the company. They boarded him on a train, he went to Hamburg, there was another representative of the company and he boarded him on a ship. We even had a picture of the ship, her name was Columbus. He arrived to America and they did not go straight to New York, but there is that island with the Statue of Liberty, and everyone had to go through a health check and if someone was, God forbid, ill, they would send them back. And from New York, he had some Czech acquaintances there, he went to Chicago and he got a job there. He did all sorts of work - in a factory, in that Chevrolet, I think, then at various farms, he worked in the mines for a while, in a hospital... And he said that he would never be without a job."

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