“Father’s friends were meeting in our home and they were always monitoring and assessing the political situation. We had a large map of Europe at home, rolled up behind the wardrobe. Dad would always pull it out and then discuss the political situation with his friends over the map. (During the war – ed.’s note) people had to have the shortwave device removed from their radios so that they would not be able to listen to foreign radio broadcast. But father had a friend who was an amateur radio operator, and he made a shortwave coil for him. They connected the coil to the antenna and they were listening to broadcast from London and Moscow on short waves. This way they knew what the situation really was.”
“A branch called State Defense Guard was formed from among Czechs and local inhabitants who sided with Czechs. These units were armed, they had light weapons, grenades and guns and a few submachine guns. They were assisting in operations against terrorists in this way. However, it elicited a counter-reaction. Organizers of terrorist acts started eliminating members of the State Defense Guard.”
“Students were always the vanguard of anti-German acts. When I was going to Velvarská Street, there was the Masaryk Student Residence Hall opposite the building. I saw Germans who were forcing the students from the residence hall get into trucks and they were transporting them somewhere to prisons. Then they closed down universities.”
Jaroslav Vesecký was born July 14, 1926 in Slatinské Doly in Carpathian Ruthenia, where his father was transferred on duty as a member of the Financial Guard. Jaroslav attended elementary school in this town. The Vesecký family moved to the tiny village Choma near Berehovo in 1936 and Jaroslav continued attending school there. After the takeover of the Carpathian Ruthenia by Hungarians the family moved to Prague. Jaroslav studied the military grammar school in Moravská Třebová and in Hranice na Moravě. Jaroslav witnessed the arrest of Czech students in Masaryk student hall in November 1939. During the German occupation, both he and his father worked with the resistance group Bartoš. He graduated from the College of Agriculture and Forestry after the end of WWII and then he worked in various jobs. He retired in 1989. At present he lives in the Nursing Home for War Veterans in Prague-Střešovice.
