Miroslav Picek

“Actually, there were the prisoners who worked on finishing the Štěchovice dam, they were also building a bridge and a road to Prague in Štěchovice. The convicts, their prisoners worked on these construction sites. They basically finished the Štěchovice dam as well as the bridge and the road in Štěchovice. So they were preparing the conditions for the settlement of the area of Neveklov. It was important to them. And then the concentration camp, it's recorded, I don't even have to talk about it, it's there as it is. There is a cross with a crown of thorns in Hradištko. The concentration camps were under... there were some barracks under the bridge in Štěchovice in the direction towards Prague on the right. The barracks stood there for some time and then they razed them to the ground because they were not useful and memorials were not built everywhere where the concentration camps stood back then. Only the memorial is up there, near the cross, in the curve above Hradištko. It is there.”

“My dad then actually acted a partisan judge. And it was because when the Germans were passing by, the partisans shot at them from the forest, from Knín. I do not know if they killed someone or not and neither they knew but the Germans came to the village, forced all the people to leave their houses, took young men older then seventeen and put them against the wall as they did it also elsewhere. And one of them who was standing against the wall, told them in German that he would go for those who shot on them and would get them and that they should not shoot. Well, they told him to go and get the offenders. He came there and told them there were men facing the wall there and that they would kill them if they did not come. So they came carrying guns and told them that they were the ones who shot and they only shot them. And the wife of the man who was shot wanted them to shoot the one who came for them to the forest. My father decided that there had already been enough blood and that if they had not wanted to leave the forest, there would have been more dead people and he set him free.”

“They went and took saws, those were handsaws back then and there were spruces like this there. The road leading up to Slapy is really nice today; first, it was paved and now it is an asphalt road, but it used to be a dusty unpaved road. So they cut wide spruces and they though that they would stop Germans with them. But some people came from Štěchovice because they got to know about it and they came from below [the village] with hunting rifles, shotguns and so on that they had hidden somewhere and they told them: ‘Guys, cut it to pieces and put them aside. Because we do not want to be killed and we do not want our bridge and dam to be blown up so clean it up.‘ So they cleaned it up and they retreated to Slapy and they built some barricades there, but the headmaster there said: ‘This is not good, this is not good... it is going to be horrible.‘ Well, up there where it used to be called ‘At Moravec‘ and where a gas station and a small memorial are nowadays, so there were a father and his son who were on patrol and were supposed to send a message down to Slapy once the Germans come. However, when the people, who were carrying guns and planning to stop the Germans at the barricades, got to know (also via the phone in the authority) that the German Army was coming with armoured personnel carriers and tanks and so on, they ran to the forest. And they left families with children and elderly people there. Well, and my father´s solution was that he put on a Czechoslovak army uniform of the first lieutenant and went to meet the Germans.