“We were in Slovakia [in August 1968 - ed.]. Later, we had to file a report on our unit’s activities when the allied forces arrived in 1968. The [political officers] immediately remember [what I had said]. Back then they said: ‘What will we do here if the [Soviets] drive up with a tank? We’re on a flat meadow, on a crossroads.’ I told them: ‘If such a situation occurs, we’ll split up. Each battery would go to a cottage in the mountains, so that the unit would be fragmented.’ But fighting [wasn’t an option]. We only had ammunition for the allotted days of the exercise, for guarding our material, our firing position and guns, and for guarding our camp. Artillery shells would have been a fat lot of good. We used that up on the firing range. They made use of it [later to allege] I’d been organising resistance to the Soviet army.”
“We were at a training session [in Špindlerův Mlýn, CZ - ed.]. There were about thirty of us [sportsmen], from which they chose and built up a military patrol, which went to the Olympics. I was lucky to be chosen for the team [as a backup]. So I went to the Olympic Games, which were held in Saint Moritz towards the end of January 1948. We were there for three weeks. It was amazing, the whole Olympic Games took place on a natural lake on the outskirts of St Moritz. When it started thawing, hockey training started at five in the morning. We lodged in a hotel with the hockey players. I was glad I could make their acquaintance. [Vladimír] Zábrodský, [Jaroslav] Drobný, all our ace players from ČLTK Praha [Český Lawn-Tennis Klub Praha] and LTC [Lawn Tennis Club Praha] were there.”
“Fleischer permitted a meeting, he was there with them for a while, then another [Gestapo] took his place. And Vojta succeeded in telling Anča to destroy the lists [of resistance fighters], which were in the enlarger. Anča came back in the evening, she went straight to us, not home, and she told me about it. I did it the same way as that night when I expected Vojta to come in by the back. A fire in the stove, locked doors, I was alone. And I scrutinised the enlarger. I reckoned: ‘There’s no doubt where it is.’ I opened up the head. I couldn’t find it there. The bad luck was that at the time when they arrested my brother, the machine had been lent to Bláha. The next day he came for the typewriter, and he returned the enlarger. I thought perhaps he had found the documents. But I didn’t give up, I looked through [my brother’s photographic] papers, opened all the unsealed boxes - especially the big-format ones. I unscrewed the casing where the power cable came in, the pipe which the enlarger moves up and down depending on how large photos you want to make. There was a brass tube tucked in next to the cable. ‘Oleáta’, a special canvas used for drawings that were required to be durable. Paper often tears, so these were special canvas oleátas, blue ones. And on them were written the lists of Škoda departments, people [in the resistance], as Sobotka had ordered it. It was bad luck that he’d seen them as well. I didn’t read a single name, a single department, because I reckoned: ‘You don’t know what you’d do [if you’d be interrogated by the Gestapo].’ I threw the lists straight into the burning stove, I burnt them, and I threw the cartridge into the village well. That way the lists were completely destroyed.”
Jaroslav Šedivec was born on 24 February 1925 in Chrást near Pilsen. His parents owned a farm (post No. 31). His oldest brother Václav took to farming the most. Jaroslav followed his second brother Vojtěch to study at the Upper State Technical School of Mechanical Engineering in Pilsen, and he started work as a design engineer at the Škoda Works. Already as a child he took an interest in sports, he was a member of Sokol and of the Workers’ Sports Union, during the Protectorate years he did competitive skiing and athletics. His brother Vojtěch Šedivec (1921-1944) joined the anti-Fascist resistance in the illegal National Revolutionary Committee in Chrást. On 11 November 1943 he was arrested by the Gestapo, a German people’s tribunal sentenced him to death. On 18 October 1944 the Nazis executed him in Dresden. However, Vojtěch had managed to send word from custody by his girlfriend, telling of the whereabouts of the group’s list of resistance members. Jaroslav destroyed the list, so that the Gestapo never got hold of it. The brothers thus saved the lives of many people. The witness took part in the 5th Winter Olympic Games in St Moritz, which were held in January and February 1948. He was there as a backup for the military patrol race. As part of a reorganisation of the army, in December 1950 the Ministry of National Defence summoned him for extraordinary military training for indeterminate length of time. That was the beginning of his military career, he became a professional soldier, and he remained in the armed forces until his retirement in 1983. In the years 1956-1969 he held the post of commander of the 11th Anti-Aircraft Unit. A review panel removed him from the function because of his refusal to accept the Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia and because he allegedly organised resistance to the Soviet army in August 1968. He then worked in the 259th Anti-Aircraft Brigade, at the 1st Army Headquarters - Anti-Air Defence Section, at the 19th Motor Rifle Division Headquarters, and at the 20th Motor Rifle Division Headquarters. Jaroslav Šedivec passed away on August, the 22nd, 2016.
