docent PhDr. Igor Pleskot

“Well, and when the Gestapo came - it did come, and it released people when there were Russian tanks rattling around the slope on the other side. So if I had stayed there - because the front was rocking to and fro for two weeks there! For one thing, my sister would’ve left without me because no one was able to check that at the time, everything was a mess. And so we were leaving by bus, and the front was already breaking up ahead of us because we were supposed to go to Brno, and [instead] we went to Olomouc, Kroměříž, Přerov, or what have you. At night we’d always see ‘Halt’, there was some military transport there, or the front had collapsed. Well, basically, we traversed half of Moravia before arriving in Brno. The moment we came to Brno, there was an enormous air raid, so they stuffed us down under Špilberk [Castle]. There were three of the bombing strikes, it was a carpet bombing of Brno. Well, and then they crammed us into a train and we set off in the direction of Bohemia. The Gestapo bloke was with us in the wagon. But we only had the salami that we’d nabbed there somehow. But the eisenbahners [railroaders] telegraphed all along the line that they were transporting children. [...] So at every station there was a crowd of people waiting, and they threw chickens, ducks, loaves of bread and Christmas bread through our windows. The Gestapo was furious, and he wanted to close the windows. And the lady teacher said: ‘Look, if you secure them with food, I’ll tell them to close the windows. If you don’t - the windows stay open.’ He locked himself into his coupé and shut up.”

My dad was arrested, I think, on 6th June 1942. At that time, I was attending academic gymnasium in Prague. When I came home form school, the Gestapo was already here with my dad searching through the flat. When my dad came home, his mother (my grandmother) had warned him about Gestapo - she lived in the flat below us - and he went down to the basement. We can't find out why, we have never found anything in there. And then he went to the flat and there was the Gestapo. This was the moment that had great impact on my life as well. My dad was saying goodbye to me and he wanted to give mi his goldwatch but the Gestapo forbade it saying that he will come back in two or three days. Dad just told me to take good care of my sister, these were his last words and he was gone. My mum and my sister were in spa at that time, mum had some problems with her gall bladder, and she went back immediately. My sister stayed there I came to the spa to be with my sister. This was the last time I saw my mum. My dad was arrested on Saturday and my mum on Monday.

“But then I reckoned: ‘For goodness’ sake, but there has to be someone here [at the Communist Party secretariat - ed.]. This won’t do, because people will be coming home from their holiday, and they’ll be looking for the head office here.’ So the one secretary who was still there said: ‘You stay here then.’ Well, someone had to do it. So I stayed there. Oh, and he also said: ‘But please, don’t let this biddy get to the phone, she’s from State Security, she’s a snitch.’ Great. So I did what he said. She had it in for me afterwards, of course. Well, so I took over the secretariat, and of course everyone kept coming there. And at first everyone was still bound by illegality, so, simply, someone’s phoning you and they say: ‘Birdie here - Birdie here - Birdie here - what’s Owl up to?’ Well, and having played this game for half a day, I realised everything was completely confused, so I started saying: ‘Pleskot here.’ I reckoned: ‘They’ll lock me up - so be it. Pleskot here.’”

So all of a sudden we were transported do Svatobořice camp in Moravia. They needed the Jenerálka camp for special prisoners of some important persons with whom they could negotiate. And we were moved to Svatobořice. We had great luck in some regards - two or three months before our arrival there was change in the command. The camp was no longer ruled by Gestapo but now the Czech policeman were in charge of the camp. The former camp commander was a germanized Czech and everyone was saying that he was big swine. This camp was determined for the relatives of soldiers fighting on the western front, especially the pilots. It was really big camp, I guess there were three to five thousands of people. It was divided into male and female part which were forbidden to meet. The female part was on one side of the road a the male part was on the other side. And there was provisional wooden bridge between these two parts. We were placed in the male part but all of us couldn't fit in so some girls were placed in the female part. Yes and in the lower section of the camp was also a ghetto with fifteen or twelve Jewish women who later disappeared.

It is such an irony of history that we all live 70 years thanks to the decision of Heinrich Himmler. Because it was Heinrich Himmler as the deputy of Hitler who requested to decide about lives of the children from those families supporting the assassination of Heydrich. I supposed that we were to end up like the Lidice children, i.e. some to be gassed and some to be adopted by German families. It was true, but Himmler was too busy to come up with definite decision and all the others were too afraid of him to decide about it by themselves. And there were some attempts. I was told that one of this attempt was blocked by K. H. Frank who said that we were too known among people that our death would cause riots and slowdown of the industrail production. I am not sure if this is true, I think it was part of the Frank defence at the court. But aside this some young historians found a document saying that there already was an order to transport us to Lódź for distribution but they didn't manage to do it because it was already too late. So thanks to this I live 70 years on loan.