Pravoslav Špoula

“I went to Frankfurt to the consulate and said: ‘Excuse me, I’m a former fugitive. Could you give me a forty-eight-hour permit to attend my mother’s funeral?’ ‘I’ll have to ask. Come tomorrow.’ I came, and they said: ‘No, you’re an undesirable person in Czechoslovakia.’ I said: ‘What for? I wasn’t convicted of anything there. You lot here are scoundrels, you’ll end up badly.’ And two years later they did. That was the first time I got into such a fury that, if I hadn’t been taken out by German policemen, I’d have done something to them and the Germans would’ve locked me up perhaps for five years. When they don’t even let you in for a funeral...”

“There was shooting. We were in a ditch near Komořany, where there are walls. The lieutenant says we have to go forward. So we did, and suddenly we were surrounded. The SS had branches in their helmets, they were crawling, and we were a group of greenhorns who wanted to fight. So we fell captive. It was getting towards evening and our leader asked who would take a message about our situation to Commander Šebestík, who was moving up from the other side to protect the bridge across the Vltava. I said I’d try. ‘But they’ll shoot you.’ I said: ‘I’ll try to escape here through this ditch.’ So I escaped. I was young and they stayed there, and then two days later they shot them all.”

“You see, I was saved by one man. He’s dead now. After I was in Železná Ruda, he was deputy to the commandant. At that time the place was headed by Šisl, or some such. Back then I came there with one other person. I wanted to get him and two others over the border. One was a pharmacist, and he had two women there and children, and he cried that... I said I’d help. I helped him, and then another one came and they caught me. They deputy said: ‘As long as the secret police don’t get their hands on you. I’ll say that you’re ill. We’ll write a report that you wanted to cross the borders because you feel ill and they’d cure you there.’ So he helped so that State Security didn’t get their hands on me, and they escorted me straight to Kladno instead.”