Ing. Antonín Srch

"One man once gave me a coin, an Australian Florin (the witness apparently means an Aruba Florin - note by the editor). He wouldn't even bother to tell me his name but we talked about work and at that time he was making very good money. So I wanted to work there too, but they wouldn't let me. Even though I was in a concentration camp, at Dachau, where I was searched several times, they didn't find it. And I went through so many checks and searches. I still have the coin to this day."

"My accomplice walked in through the door - I thought he would take the opportunity and run away. He was the son of a police man. He was fluent in Russian and therefore it was worse for him, because it was him who was actually writing the letters. I just dictated. I even passed an exam in Russian at the Gestapo. Then I made a deal with the Gestapo that I'll sign what they already knew anyway. Then I went through a number of courts, the last one was the Supreme Court in Munich. I got the death penalty – that was a rather usual penalty at that time. Those who were free got me a lawyer. I gave him some money, but most importantly, we made a deal. He'd help me now and I'd help him after the war."

"I had friends who worked in the Strakonice armaments factory. They would steal weapon components and since they couldn't resist the temptation, they would every now and then have a few blasts. All of them were caught, arrested and sentenced to death. The embarrassing part was that their lawyers – who charged twenty thousand crowns for their defense – didn't help at all. Only Miloš Blažek – who was a sort of a Tarzan – knocked out the bars, jumped out of the window into the compost and buried himself in it so that the dogs wouldn't find him. Then – it was in the autumn – he traveled all the way to Písek, starving and eating snails and raw potatoes on the way. My father worked at the train station in Protivín. Back then it was just a village and the railway station was located where the settlement ended and the forest started. My father regularly went into that forest to pick mushrooms. Miloš waited until it got dark and then he sought out my father and they agreed that my dad would bring him food into the forest because the Gestapo was waiting for him at his place so he couldn't go home. My father would bring him food from his parents."

"For me there was simply no work there, so I had to hide. They would look for those not working at around 10 o'clock, so Dr. Bláha ordered me to hide in the morgue, sometimes even in one of the zinc coffins. They were used repeatedly. Then there came a call that they were looking for brainiacs. Of course I didn't hesitate and signed up. For the time being, I was covered. But then, a commission came that investigated whom they actually needed and whom not. I obviously didn't quite fit because I was no scientist. So I got back on the edge of society. At the time, they were looking for someone speaking Russian. There were some Russian prisoners working in the locomotives repair shop. They needed someone who would intermediate between them and the camp authorities. They took me on that job and one other guy. It wasn't bad, even the civilians respected us and sometimes, we even got something to eat."