Ladislav Kafka

“There were four or five Germans.” “In the house?” “No, on the way from Teplice, since there was a stone pit and they had their position there. From this place they dragged telephone wires on the ground leading to the stone pit from their commandership. Some citizens from Trenčianske Teplice always used to cut these wires to them. There was one old man, old soldier, a member of the Volkssturm, who used to go and repair it. He had such a stick with a loop using it to find where it was cut. It was always at the same spot. When he was about to repair it for like the sixth time, he called out people living in the nearby house. He said he didn´t mean it wrong, but he didn´t want to do it over and over again like a fool. Back then I already understood German. They were trying to discover who was cutting it and everybody kept denying. After all, they found out there was one lady, who used to cut it not in front of her house, but theirs. She worked as a birth assistant in Trenčianska Teplá. The German said, if that action was going to repeat, he would have to report it and they might have been shot down for sabotage. So she stopped, since her neighbors told her to kick her ass if she didn´t. They said she could have done it in front of her house, but not theirs, thus she stopped doing it for good.”

“I could see that everywhere I came. Not right on the next day, but gradually. One mate from Lúčky, his name was Papan, was among them as well. I noticed that when they talked to one another, they stopped immediately as I entered the room. And it was silence. I knew they had to plot something against me. I realized it later, that I being an assistant of the commissar was very suspicious for them. They thought I was a traitor employed to be among them. I realized I had to solve this, so I told them: ‘Are you insane? I can see you stop talking when I come. I am not any spy or rat, or anything else. I am the same PTP soldier like you are. Politically unreliable, dismissed from studies, arrested, and so on.’ And then it stopped.”