"The cottages there, all of them were wooden. There was no electricity, no gas, no running water. In the evening, at dusk, it all looked as if full of fireflies. This place would lighten up, then that one... Nowadays, it's all stone houses. Only a high-rise is missing. I don't like it. I was looking for a name to give Čeladná and came up with it being a fairytale village in between mountains dotted with wooden houses. And all of them used oil lamps. We used to go to the cowshed carrying lanterns. I still recall well our old cottage. My dad bought it well, under a bank. No road led to it. There was absolute peace. It was a hundred meters from a river full of trouts. Everytime I went to wash there, I reached under the stone and touched a trout."
"Soviet soldiers came over to get hay for the horses. My father went alongside them to the barn. They were looking for one soldier who was serving under general Vlasov. The Red Army had enemies in its own ranks. As they were loading the hay, they overheard a bang. One of the soldiers said that it was that guy, left the hay behind and saw the soldier running towards our neighbours. They ran after him there. In the yard, my mum lay dead. That soldier shot her in the left lung. We only found out the next day when the doctor came over to write a protocol. The two soldiers who came for hay later caught that guy."
"That Vogel guy whom I was able to communicate with, was a member of a gardening club. Once, I asked him what he was about to do on Sunday. He said he had plenty of work because he ordered a full train of soil from Ukraine. They used to say that it was possible to harvest twice per year there. The Germans were digging out the soil there and the German gardeners were ordering whole wagons of it. And so the German guy said he had a lot of work to do, having to deal with the wagon full of soil for his garden."
František Galas was born on 5 October 1920 in the village of Čeladná in the Beskydy mountains. He grew up in a wooden cottage in humble conditions. He trained to become a founder and then worked in the Vítkovice steel mills in Ostrava. In 1942, he was sent to forced labour in Germany. After receiving a message that his wife fell ill, he secretly escaped home. There, he received a warrant saying he had to return to Germany immediately. An acquaintance who worked at the labour office helped him obtain a certificate stating that he was ill. He pretended to have fever and eye inflammation. Eventually, he found a job in a mine and was able to stay in Ostrava because the miners were protected against forced labour. He and his wife witnessed the end of the war in Beskydy. On 8 May 1945, a tragedy occured - his mother was shot dead by a soldier who served under general Vlasov and was hiding from the Red Army soldiers. The family then went into conflict with the soldiers. After the war, he returned to the Vítkovice steel mills where he worked as a founder up until retirement.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
