Jan Šefl

“I didn’t go down into the caisson. And then it was why. There were seven of us there. And they said: ‘Hey, where were you?’ And when we went up, I slipped in among the boys and even got a receipt. I didn’t have any foreman’s confirmation, but I got it. The second time I did it again, and the third time three or four people did it, and it was half empty. And there was an investigation, it was terrible. One boy came out from there and said: ‘Man, big trouble.’ I did it as well, so did this other chap. There were three or four of us who’d done it. And he said: ‘Man, they say they’ll lock us up.’ One boy named Hajník was locked up because of it. And when I saw that, I went to get Dolmetsch [an interpreter - ed.], one of the boys, a Czech boy who spoke German as well, and I told him: ‘Look, I skipped work. We have to say I was ill, that I had to leave, that the foreman wasn’t there at the time...’ That he’d swum up. They pulled the foreman out in those fifteen minutes. And they left us there, of course. ‘...and that I’d come out, that I was sick, and that I hadn’t returned after that.’ And they kept talking about it there, he explained the situation, and the German kept refusing, refusing, until at last he threw the confirmed ticket and said: ‘Raus!’ At me, at us, meaning, out! So I didn’t end up in the cooler, but the other boy, Hajník, he did. And do you know what kind of punishment they had for when you skipped work? A small cabin, concrete, concrete everywhere, and holes at the bottom. And water’d come it at various intervals. He was there for a week. Or ten days perhaps. The water flowed, he was exhausted, so he sat down, then the water flowed again. So he got up, but then he even slept in the water. It flowed beneath him. He said: ‘I wouldn’t do that again, it was a horror.’ He had to survive on bread and water.”

“I was also given the work of supplying bread with a German driver. We’d take some fifteen to sixteen hundred loaves from the German bakery. [...] The Russians were clearing the snow there. And we’d pass by with the bread, and because we had to stop, they smelt the bread from the car. They said: ‘Davay! Davay!’ I opened the back door, [...] I couldn’t help it - I threw them a loaf of bread. [...] They started fighting for it, with shovels. So I threw them another one. And there was trouble. There were some youngsters there, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old, who had guns; they were guarding the Russian captives, and they fired a shot. They didn’t fire at them though, not at them. We arrived, and they already had a report that this had happened. So they called us into the office of Front Führer Köln. He asked: ‘Who threw out that bread?’ We were silent. [...] So he said: ‘Very well, give them a military tribunal!’ So I stepped forward and said: ‘I did it.’ [...] He took me by the collar and began bashing me against the door. How come I gave them to our enemies? How come I had supported them?”