“My dad was working for the Sokol in Brno 1. He was a news editor for Sokol. He knew the president Jílek, chief Zezula, and educational director Vezera very well. He was editing the news, and for me it was interesting to experience the Sokol rally (slet) in 1924 with him. During this slet, the all-Sokol rally in 1914 was remembered, mentioning how it was interrupted by the declaration of national mourning because of the assassination in Sarajevo. On this occasion, a scene was presented during the rally, which I still remember vividly. Men were lining up for free standing exercises and suddenly a cannon shot was heard, they stood still and then they were led away from the field, and behind them, the four riders of the Apocalypse appeared: war with a torch, death with a scythe, gaunt hunger and brown plague. I was a boy at that time, a young Sokol pupil, and I was very impressed by this scene. I saw this Sokol rally twice. The president in a white suit arrived there, he was sitting in the audience in an appointed seat.”
“Those who didn’t go out were being taken for work in the camp. Especially by a guy whom we nicknamed Rakvičkář (Coffin-man). He was taking us to the crematorium, where we had to carry all sorts of things. We were carrying coffins, and the worst thing was when one day he ordered us to clean up inside defunct barracks where the prisoners suffering from dysentery had lived. This was something terrible. We were carrying out the bunk beds from there, you can imagine that they were soiled. The walls of these beds were already dismantled and we were breaking the bunks apart and then reassembling them in a different place. The patients were lying in one heap, some were not moving anymore, some still were. They didn’t make us carry these patients out anymore. But still, when I returned to my block, I was damn careful to wash my hands thoroughly, because hygiene was a matter of life and death.”
“At that time I was a secretary of the student union in Brno, which was located in the Kounicovy dorms. We organized demonstrations against the Nazi threat. I remember that the 1st May was celebrated in the Zelný trh Square jointly by all parties, except the agrarian party, which withdrew. The only speaker was professor Kúdela. And I led a group of students from the dorms there, I was in their front, we even had a flag. We were simply demonstrating our support for the republic. And Munich was the worst blow for us. For me it was the worst disaster ever in my entire life. Because our illusory presumptions that we had allies were now shattered.”
“What is important is that after we were arrested and taken to the camp we haven’t been forgotten. Not only that our parents haven’t forgotten us, but also the national resistance movement, comprising of our colleagues who escaped and joined a foreign army, created a central Students’ Union in London and only two years later together with British, American and other students they declared 17th November the International Students’ Day. Later this began to be forgotten, because the communists didn’t like it. In all speeches in London in 1940, 1942, when they declared this day as the International Students’ Day, they made us the first group known all around the world, which has demonstrated against Nazism. And this way, if only platonically, this worldwide public awareness actually protected us. Later we learnt that Himmler issued an order that we were not to be dispersed to other camps and we were to be gradually released.”
“In Berlin, the SS men cleared out the railway station quite thoroughly. They cleared out the whole platform where our transport was to arrive, we were probably delayed. When I grabbed the railing to step down, an SS man immedietaly grabbed my hand, he had handcuffs ready and we had to run out to these police vans and this way they were taking us to the camp. We rode for a very long time, the car clattered on cobblestones for many kilometres. Meanwhile it got completely dark, at night they got us out of these vans right under huge lamps which were glowing on the gate of the concentration camp. We had no idea what it was like, they kicked us to order into columns of five and then led us inside, they opened the camp’s gate and flooded the area with light. The place was large as an airfield, covered with hardpacked snow, which crunched under our feet, and for the night they locked us up in one empty block. There were no formalities, they just told us that we had written a petition protesting against the Nazis and that we were now interned as enemies. That was it.”
Jiří Zapletal was born March 22, 1917 in Brno. He was the eldest of three siblings, his father was working in finance. The family lost several of its members in WWI, his uncle from the mother’s family had been a legionnaire in Russia. In between the wars Jiří attended the Sokol organization, studied grammar school and in 1937 he was admitted to the university in Brno to study law. He remained there till 1939. When the war began, Jiří Zapletal took active part in students’ unrest. After the Nazis had closed down Czech universities, he was arrested in December 1939 and in January of the following year transported via Vienna to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. He spent a year there and he was released on Christmas. He was working in finance till the end of the war. After the liberation he completed his law studies, but with the communist regime on the rise he eventually decided to work as an editor instead.
