Bohumil Glückauf

“Nuremberg was in ruins. When you looked out of these cars, there were only remains of walls. You could not see a single normal building which would remain standing. Everything has been destroyed. It was a shocking sight. I still remember it. We passed through Regensburg. We arrived there and there was an air raid. The wardens locked us in the train cars and ran into a shelter. They left us in the train cars in the railway station. When the planes passed, they unlocked the cars again. They just let us out. That was because fighter planes flew over the area.”

“A German housewife gave us some eggs. I had two eggs and even this was too much for me. They were raw. Those who have eaten more even suffered from perforation of intestines as a result. It was terrible. Well, we escaped there and hid there. Only the SS men were still fighting, but the regular army was throwing their weapons away. They were giving up the fight. We were looking from above at a convoy of cars riding under us. The American army was advancing. The village where we were was all in white: white bed sheets and flags as a sign of surrender. And on April 29, 1945 I was liberated.”

“There was a one-room flat next to ours, and the neighbours had a radio mounted on the adjacent wall and they were always listening to the broadcast from London. We found out, so I took a tin cup, placed it against the wall and listened to London with them. I was thus influenced in a away. Later when I wanted to escape to the Czechoslovak army in Britain, Dad tried to dissuade me and he told me: "Don’t you think that you get there and you will immediately be given some high rank." My mother had no objections to it. Nonetheless, that was it, I had made my decision. This story encompasses the entire journey, my entire odyssey. From my journey, to the arrest, and then all the prisons, the trial in Nuremberg, the transport to the prison in Ebrach, four years there, and then the transport to Straubing, the death march, and the liberation.”

“My father was a political officer in the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party, and my mother was a housewife. He was transferred to Pardubice, which was a regional centre at that time, to serve in the regional committee. He worked there as the regional secretary and his duty was to attend meetings that they were holding every Saturday and Sunday, they had certain subsections there, and he would always go to these meetings in order to keep in touch with the party members. He was presenting his views there and listening to their opinions and to the petitions of the members. His boss at that time was Bohumil Laušman who later became the minister of industry.”