Jozef Babiak

“And when Germans crushed the Uprising, four partisans wanted to get to Oremov Laz, where was the training centre. They set off the bridge in the evening and came so that I took them there, what was more than 20 km. So being a boy back then, at night I went with them to Senohrad and we walked until midnight. As soon as we noticed some kind of light, we were hiding. This way I took them there.”

“It was the Christmas Eve, the first Christmas in Technical Auxiliary Battalions (PTP). Dinner was nicely prepared in the canteen, we even had fish. There was one political officer of the whole unit, his name was Kopřiva, who began his speech, ‘Dear comrades, one Georgian night, our comrade Stalin was born!’ And such stupidities. When the speech was over, he wished us to enjoy the food. My friend Lojzo Jurkáček said, ‘Do you want the Stalin’s dinner? I don’t.’ Thus we stood up from the table and went to our room. We had some stuff in packages from home, so we ate that. However, this political officer came to ask us, why we didn’t eat dinner. Lojzo asked him, ‘Comrade Captain, what are we actually celebrating today? Birth of Christ or birth of Stalin?’ He said, ‘Birth of Stalin!’ And Lojzo continued, ‘Stalin was born on December 21, and today is the 24th!’ He kept questioning him, because at the seminary, they also studied Marxism-Leninism, so the officer was completely finished! Then he used to come to Lojzo and ask him to work as a political officer!”

“He wrote that on the paper. He gave me 4 days off exceptionally, since we didn’t have any vacation days. He let me go home and I just had to have it confirmed from the village office. I came to the office and asked them for signature. They read it; looked at each other, they were acquaintances of mine, we all knew everyone at our village, and they told me, ‘We cannot sign it for you, the official procedure must be followed. We will send it to you in formal way!’ When I came back to the barracks, the commander was waiting for me, ‘Give me the paper!’ ‘I don’t have it. They told me, they’d send it by mail.’ ‘They lied to you!’ And I convinced him, ‘No, for sure they didn’t, they all are my friends, almost a family!’ But he was right. A week later he called me, ‘Come here!’ They wrote on the back side of the paper that they wouldn’t sign it as it was not well-grounded.”