“When the gendarmes claimed they were distilling spirits, Mrs Pospíšilová replied that they were not distilling spirits and that they did not have such equipment. To which the official retorted by declaring a house inspection. It was a mistake because we heard that the equipment wasn’t at the Pospíšils, but that it had been taken away by Martin Pavlík on the Wednesday preceding the inspection. The gendarmes began searching the loft, and two others rummaged through the living room and ground floor. There was a Russian fugitive hidden in the hay in the loft, and there were gun shots and shouting. One copped it, and the second one, who was on the stairway, yelled for help. Then the shooting stopped, and the news of what had happened quickly spread through the whole village. So the chairlady Palmová phoned straight to Šumperk, reporting that there was a gunfight during a house inspection, and that people had died. A whole truckload came here, and in the meantime she started securing the twelve people who were responsible for various matters there. They had to enter the building, and the Russian fugitive was taken there.”
“When they started with me, all I remember is that they asked me where I lived, if I was trained for some profession, if I had been in Sokol. So I admitted that I had been in Sokol. The secretary made notes of everything. When I refused to admit to anything more, they pulled my trousers down, threw a coat over me, and two blokes mashed my bum. Then they stopped and asked how long I had been working for Ryznar, what else I did, and if I knew Pospíšil. I told him I had only borrowed a bike from him once. In actual fact the autumn before I had gone from Zábřeh to Lanškroun and Dolní Heřmanice with a travel permit to Yugoslavia for two people.”
“We dug anti-tank trenches. We marched up on to the meadows six abreast. We also had a wooden two-wheeler with us, which was pulled by two and pushed by two. I was curious what the chief had inside it. One prisoner - the son of the gamekeeper from the Drozd sawmill - told me he always had it loaded with six to eleven dead workers. We built water ditches. Two men at the bottom threw up to half a metre of material up top, and the next two moved it on to another group. On each side there were three groups making anti-tank trenches. People dropped down there. The bottom one always stood in water because it was drenched from the nearby river.”
Jan Prokop was born on 4 October 1923 in the village of Jedlí in Zábřeh District. During the war he acted as a messenger for the Jedlí resistance group, which was part of the illegal organisation National Association of Czechoslovak Patriots. Among other things, the resistance in Jedlí hid the Soviet fugitive Nikolai Buss. A German house inspection at Jan Pospíšil’s home in Jedlí on 18 February 1944 resulted in a firefight, during which two German gendarmes were killed together with Nikolai Buss. The following day the Gestapo arrested twenty-year-old Jan Prokop. He underwent brutal interrogations and several months of imprisonment. On the brink of death, the end of the war found him locked up in an infection cell in Terezín’s Small Fortress. If the worldwide conflict had lasted just a week longer, he would have died. After the war Jan Prokop worked at MEZ in Ráječek, and continues to live in his native village to this day.
This converted house owned by the family during the war Pospíšilova. On February 18, 1944 there was a firefight with German gendarmes that killed a Soviet defector Nikolai Buss.
This converted house owned by the family during the war Pospíšilova. On February 18, 1944 there was a firefight with German gendarmes that killed a Soviet defector Nikolai Buss.
