Mečislav Černý

“There were twenty young men from Baťa’s factory who arrived with me. Since I was the only one able to speak German, the company made me a liaison between our Czech group and their managers. But I could also speak French and Russian quite well, and there were Russian and French prisoners… We were strictly forbidden to contact the Russian prisoners. Some veteran, who had returned wounded from the battle, from Russia, was interpreting for them. But since his language skills were not that great, they would always call me to help with the translation. Thus I was interpreting for the Russians. Instructions from their leaders – what they were to do and how, and so on.”

“Later I got into an awkward situation. From time to time I was able to get to the Russians there, and since our people knew what their situation was, they were giving me bread and some food for them and I was handing it over to the Russians. I always did it this way. But somebody, a man from Sudeten, informed upon me, and I got into trouble. The company director and owner Kurt Knorre called me to his office and told me that this couldn’t be, that I knew that we were not allowed to approach the Russians and if I went to them I had to be accompanied by the company employees. If I went there by myself, it was an offence, and then he wouldn’t be able to cover me. Just by the way he let me know that it was a Sudetenlander who had turned me in. I was very careful from then on.”

“A friend of mine, a bit older than me, was working there. He got hired. I don’t remember exactly, but he had to pay some bond, to make a guarantee. It was difficult to get there. Baťa was constructing a railway there at that time, and the demand for work was huge, and Baťa could choose from the applicants, thus making it difficult. Everyone had to convince the company somehow that he was able to do something, that he could endure something. He managed to get employment there. When I saw it, I tried as well. But I didn’t get accepted. Only later in 1941, in February, I eventually did get in. I didn’t go for the railroad construction anymore, but went to Baťov, or Otrokovice, instead. The town was called Baťov, because Baťa had built it on a swamp, they built a town there. They called it Bahňák or Blaťák.”

“I had been reading adventure novels from the Wild West a lot – by Karl May. I read all his books about Indians. As boy I loved games when we pretended we were Indians. I learned to crawl stealthily just like Vinnetou or Old Shatterhand did, and I also learned how to camouflage myself – using feathers, twigs and becoming invisible in bushes. And moving by leap-frogs, and things like that. I had learned it and I began teaching it to this Belgian guy. He was a diligent student, learning the movements, and then it paid off to us at the turn of 1944 and 1945 when the fighting was going on. Fortunately, the fighting was going on in the south, and we needed to get to the west. Plus we were also just plain lucky. Thanks to these tricks we had learned, this knowledge of the natives (in order to camouflage ourselves we smeared mud on our faces, attached twigs to our bodies and began crawling) and thus we managed to get on the other side and to get out of the reach of the armed forces.”