“Brother Novák, our Sokol leader from Podmokly, came to us and he told me: ‘You got a train pass, could you go somewhere for me? You can ride the train for free.’ I agreed. Soon after, less than a month after, brother Zelenka, who was the leader of the Ore Mountains Kukaň’s District, asked me to do the same thing. Perhaps you have heard of him. He used an alias Hajský during the war. I was thus going where they sent me. This lasted until the terror which followed after Heydrich’s assassination, and at that time I was already in Prague. I was just approaching Charles Square when they were fighting against our paratroopers in the church. I was a member of the fencing club Slavia, and I wanted to pass through Charles Square on my way back, but they did not let us through anymore. We were watching what was happening, and we saw the shooting, and when the firemen were called in, and all this. Brother Kapka, a former Sokol member who was our fencing coach and who transferred to the Slavia club with us, told me: ‘If you know something, forget it right now; you have not done anything, and you don’t know anything.’ I could not understand what he meant, but then I learnt that there was a resistance group which was organized by members of the Sokol gym in Michle, and that it was called Illegal Group of Sokol Zelenka-Hajský. It was him; our leader was this Zelenka. They were involved in hiding people, and Zelenka-Hajský was also the one who secured the hiding place for the paratroopers in the church of Sts Cyril and Methodius. At that moment I quit everything, I forgot everything and I continued my life as before, and in 1943 I graduated from grammar school.”
“The shift manager informed upon me that I was giving food to concentration camp prisoners through a hole in the ceiling which served for ventilation. I was arrested by the Gestapo. But the two vorarbeiters [leaders] went there and they intervened for me and therefore I was eventually not sent to the concentration camp Dora [near Nordhausen], but into a so-called Bummelandlager. It was a labour camp, which belonged to the Dora camp, and we worked in Dora, but we had this so-called Straatanzug, different clothing. It happened as late as in February 1945, when there was an air raid on Nordhausen. The guys who knew me from the Junkers factory lent me civilian clothing. They told me: ‘You know it, and you can speak German, and you will thus go.’ This vorarbeiter, Mr. Klaidamayer, had told me before I got arrested: ‘If you ever want to run away, I will tell you one thing. You can only escape through the front line, because it is difficult for them to control it.’”
“When we came there they told us to go up there, to the place where the metro station Kačerov is now. We came there at quarter to two, and there were felled tree trunks, and dirt and bricks layered on top of them. You could not call it a barricade, it was rather and army barrier. It was commanded by a former legionnaire from Russia. On 5th May we were sent down to the lower Krč neighbourhood. It was where the fruit processing-factory Flora was. Germans were positioned there. Protectorate police arrived there on horses and they said that they would take over. We thus returned to the place where the barricade was. Some German was shooting at us from the back from a building, but we were able to cover ourselves. At night between 5th and 6th May, around 3 o’clock, something passed down there along the Vltava River in lower Krč, but we did not know what it was. In the morning, probably between 9 and 10 o’clock, but I don’t know for sure because I didn’t have a watch, I remember that they were announcing on the radio that there was a ceasefire until the talks with Frank. The shooting thus stopped and tanks arrived there from Budějovická Street, and there was a curve in the road the direction up to Pankrác. The commander said: ‘They stopped. You can speak German.’ He grabbed a white flag and we went there together. He told me: ‘You will serve as a translator.’ I went with him. As we were talking to him, at the same time somebody fired at us from above and he replied: ‘What are you telling me,? Look, he is shooting at us!’ I said: ‘That’s not true, that’s a German, and he is shooting at us from the back. I don’t know if he wants to shoot me or you.’”
“After the air raid I went to tell mom that I was OK. I just stopped by the door and I talked to her for about two minutes. Mr. Henz, who was a policeman in the Protectorate police, passed by and he told me: ‘I’d need to talk to you, could you come with me?’ I trusted him as a neighbour, and he led me to the police station here in Michle, and there he ordered two policemen to escort me to Petschek Palace. I will never forget it: 2nd floor, room n. 24. – it was the same as my year of birth. I was interrogated; I don’t even want to talk about it, I don’t like speaking about it. I had had most of my teeth intact, but they are now all false teeth, because I have left them in that room. The first interrogation is always tougher, because they want to make you more docile. He asked me: ‘How come that you escaped, and from where did you escape?’ I said: ‘I escaped from Köthen.’ I risked it. ‘The factory was bombed out and we were supposed to return after ten months. Then I began working in the Junkers factory here.’ They were verifying it and in the Junkers company they told them that I was employed there, and they called the labour office, and the labour office also confirmed: ‘Yes, he was sent to work in Junkers Köthen.’ They did not have any other information. I don’t know why that policeman handed me over to them. Just because he knew that I had escaped from Germany, or why? I still don’t know it. He is already dead, anyway. I was thus able to go back and thank God they did look into it further.”
Antonín Štícha was born in 1924 in Podmokly nad Labem in the border region. When he was fourteen years old, he and his family had to leave the border area and they moved to Prague. Antonín continued exercising in the Sokol organization in Prague just as he had been doing while living in Podmokly. During the war he served as a messenger and he carried secret messages and documents by train. After graduation in 1943 he had to do forced labour in the Jawa factory and then he was taken for work to Germany. After two months he was accused of giving food to prisoners from the concentration camp who were being taken for work to the factory. Antonín was arrested by the Gestapo, but when two of his superiors intervened, he was taken back to the labour camp instead to a concentration camp. After an air raid at the factory, friends provided civilian clothing for him and he fled back to Czechoslovakia. He was hiding in the Vysočany neighbourhood in Prague, but somebody informed upon him and he was arrested and taken for interrogation. Antonín managed to prove that he was employed and he was released. He continued hiding until the outbreak of the Prague Uprising, in which he actively took part in the 1st Battalion of Marksman Jan Čapek. He studied military academy after the war and he served in the army until his retirement. Colonel Antonín Štícha is still active in several veterans’ organizations.
