“And we kept dreaming. About the life that would come after the war… And I have to tell you something interesting – once Kitty came to me and says: “Imagine this, Jana, that they would call us to the concentration camp, and I think it was even called Auschwitz, and there they would take us to this huge bathroom, you know, and they would give us towels, and imagine that instead of water they would spray gas at us.” – They were the gas chambers, we knew they existed and nowadays you hear that people didn’t know about them but that’s not true. ”
“They were asking him: “Where are your shoes?!” And he says: “Under the stairs.” There was this tiny entrance room so he went and shouted at the one downstairs to bring him his shoes, I don’t know why he couldn’t go down himself but he went… And my brother used the occasion, those couple of seconds, it was a matter of seconds – under the window there, there was an old terrace, that’s already destroyed today. And he jumped on that terrace and from there onto the neighbour’s terrace, because it was a double house, and from the neighbour’s terrace down and then with no shoes, not a coin in his pocket, he went along the river Orlice, it was a foggy morning, ugly, no one was walking there… then over a bridge that used to be there and he got to the so-called Doly where someone gave him shoes, and he got to the Orlické mountains where he hid at a cousin’s house. We heard nothing about him until 1966.”
“About two years after my brother, I don’t know exactly, Petr Pujman and his group in Prague also attempted to emigrate. But they were doing it wrong – they were simply already under surveillance and somebody gave it away. It’s different when you’re leaving by yourself and when there are more people – things leak easier. And they were even planning to fly on an airplane, maybe even to the United States, I don’t know, Petr never talked about it to me, he would come by after my brother was gone – I don’t know. The whole group simply got caught, that was the year 1949 or 1950. And so they caught them and locked them up and Mrs Pujmanová was pleading with Gottwald for him, she knew him personally, being the National Artist Marie Pujmanová.”
You’re living in a beautiful time
Jana Vecková, née Králová, was born in Potštejn in the Rychnov nad Kněžnou area in 1932. When she was seven years old she met a girl of the same age named Kitty, whose family of Jewish ancestry got to Potštejn after their property was confiscated. After the war Jana Vecková studied medicine and worked in the field her whole life. In 1948 she witnessed her brother escaping the StB before he illegally crossed the border.
