Jan Soukop

“There used to be brickworks half a kilometre from the village; they've filled the place up since. A retired gamekeeper, the countess’ servant, lived in the plant apartment. His name was [Šula], and he was German. My grandma thought he had a lot to do with the Nazi. So, she wanted to… my father asked me to get a horse and a cart and take her there. When we arrived, [Šula] sent me outside and talked to grandma. Later on, grandma told me he had shown her many documents and said: ‘These are all letters denouncing people; I saved them all.’ In 1945, after Russians had arrived, the partisans took poor Šula out, threw him out in a potato field, and that’s where he died. His daughter was there with him, the single Mary, and she arranged his funeral. The partisans treated him like a Nazi collaborator, although he had actually saved people, you know.”

“We went to Třešť where they took us over and trucked us to Jihlava. Military officers were drafted [to the auxiliary battalions] in 1952 and 1953... As we were boarding the train, Mr Máca, my former teacher in Nová Říše, stood by the car door and I asked him: ‘Mr Máca, where are we going?’ – ‘I’m not allowed to tell you.’ He didn’t tell me. He knew me; I mean, he used to teach me. Turns out, we went to Komárno; to the fort next to the city walls and the port on the Danube. We stayed there for three weeks. They taught us the left turns, right turns, and salutes. They wanted to ‘re-educate’ us. They said: ‘We will shoot you all. We will pave the fort yard with your bodies.’”

“They went after dad. We could stand it until about 1952, but I was 21 and my brother was 20 years old in 1952. We were forced to join the army on 30 August 1952, and dad went on to build Žďár on 20 September 1952.” – “Did he go to ŽĎAS?” – “Yes, they put him in prison, and he stayed there for five months from the end of September; he came back the next February or March.”