“Activities of the White Legion movement in Bratislava were really of the resistance basis. We tried to acquire some evidence, proofs of the communists’ activities. At the Faculty of Natural Sciences, there was Mr. Drieňovský, who carried out various researches that were attractive for the West. As the employees of Pozemné stavby, we had an access to the Research Institute for Cables and Insulators in Bratislava, from where we took the project documentation with us to Spain. Later, we took the whole pipeline, the whole pipe fitting of the Juraj Dimitrov Bratislava chemical plant. These papers, these spy projects, which were supposed to serve us, should have been handed in and we should have got a reward for our studies and for supporting the peace mission of our people here in Slovakia after the liberation.”
“When I wanted to go to study at the university, I submitted an application and Mr. Chmela agreed with it. It was necessary to deliver it to the director, because I wanted to study at the university and work at the same time. Unfortunately, I went to the university twice as I wanted to be sure that they got my application. ‘We don’t have it, Mr. Granec, we really don’t.’ I went back and I asked them to show me how they sent it. The director was away, so I told it to his secretary and I asked her to show me my papers. Of course, I realised that my application hadn’t been signed by the director. As soon as he came I talked to him a bit sharper. Though he had to keep his distance as I was his employee, we got along very well. He told me, ‘Bring that applications form and I will sign it right here before your eyes.’ He took it and wrote there, ‘Approved, Demien.’ I wanted to take that application and to go to the university, but I wasn’t allowed to do so, as I was said it had to be sent officially through the post. It was delivered there within a week. When I came to the secretariat of the university, I found my application there. It was signed by the director Demien; however, there was written ‘Disapproved’ instead of ‘Approved’. Then, I left the press service and went to work to a greengrocer’s shop. However, I wasn’t accepted, I wasn’t allowed to work there, because they got my personal evaluation. Thus I started working in an affiliated production of collective farm in Maňa, where we established a sort of promotional centre that operated at a high level.”
“When I was on a round in Bratislava, I met my former professor Mr. Drieňovský, who introduced me and my classmate Jožko Gašparovič to the work and programme of the White Legion. Of course, we clearly expressed our positive attitude to these resistance activities. It was Catholic, it was humane, and it was a sort of sunny job and mission for the members of White Legion. This way our activities started and this way White Legion was born in Bratislava. Unfortunately, there were also people, who didn’t want to believe us, who didn’t want to understand that our intensions were really fair and honest."
“White Legion radio was aimed at destructive activities, which actually meant familiarizing citizens with democracy, freedom of speech and the like. It had never been a sort of armed force, it had nothing in common with death; it only wanted to create a new idea, new thinking opposing the communist regime and it wanted to do this in a humane and honest way.”
“In the year 1955, at least I think so, I was contacted by the two members of the State Security, who came to my workplace in the metalworking company called Kovospracujúci podnik mesta Bratislavy. I was offered to collaborate with the State Security as they considered me to be a person with experiences in the field of anti-state activities and with contacts to people of anti-state thinking. I was afraid of this cooperation. They promised they wouldn’t refer to me with any important issues; they only wanted me to report for them if somebody would contact me about any anti-state activities. It hasn’t happened so far. Nobody has contacted me and I haven’t expressed any interest in this cooperation. Later, they vehemently incited our meetings. They still wanted me to dwell on the matters of collaboration with my former colleagues, family members, classmates. At that time I was still single and I wasn’t interested in doing such things at all. I only accepted the collaboration because I was told I wouldn’t be bothered by it. Later, when they were preparing actions for my brother in law Ružovič, for Višňovský and so on, I lied to them. Surely, I lied to them or rather I only told them what they had told me to say. My collaboration has never been concrete, it has never been like they imagined it, actually that I would help them to reveal the anti-state activities of people in my surroundings. I only want to add that the man who wrote my record concerning the collaboration with the State Security was so naive that he believed me and let me lie. I really don’t want to rub in this part of my life and to dissect it. It was a consequence of my youth activities, of my young age and I have never, I swear on my parents’ honour, I have never hurt anybody. I have never tried to damage anybody’s reputation, dignity, and his/her personality.”
“Some of us decided to go to study theology or something else to Spain. The chairman of the Democratic Party of Slovakia, Mr. Kvetko, worked there at that time. For this purpose we, I mean all members of White Legion along with Mr. Drieňovský, developed a plan for going abroad through Devínska Nová Ves, which I knew the best, and from where we were supposed to leave for Austria and to come to the American embassy there. Thence, we should try to get to Spain to see doctor Kvetko. Unfortunately, we weren’t successful, because there were certain people among us, who didn’t identify with our programme and who more or less followed the proposition saying betray and get a reward. Such people were for example Mrs. Leitner, Mr. Kinčeš and some others, whose names I don’t remember and who betrayed us. Thus, we were caught at the railway station of Bratislava Lamač exactly when we were about to leave the republic. Thence we should have walked to Devín municipal area, to Kobyla, and then across the borders. However, we didn’t make it.”
“The group firstly consisted of three people, who initiated it and developed the statutes of the White Legion movement. These statutes were meant to support an establishment of peace, democracy, and freedom of speech. The author of the statutes and later also of membership cards of the White Legion was Vincent Drieňovský. He gave me his manuscript and suggested me to rewrite it here in a dorm of Pozemné stavby, where I was living at that time along with Jožko Gašparovič. Our goal was to gain as many new members as possible. We were recruiting new members at the workplaces as well as in our neighbourhood. I recruited Edo Martanovič, who was a typographer, or rather a printer, and he produced moulds for the cards of White Legion and printed several cards and application forms. These cards were expected to be given to the new members. Mr. Drieňovský expressed his request to be a person with power to see the applications and to make corrections, so as he could say if we should or shouldn’t accept a certain person as our member. At first, we were three men meeting at the streets based on the phone calls that I and Jožko Gašparovič got from Mr. Drieňovský. Then, we handed in about twenty application forms to Mr. Drieňovský. He gave seventeen application forms back to us. They were filled out and it meant that the movement had seventeen new members, new weapons.”
“When I was only seventeen, it was the first time I felt a real fury to my cost. Fury faces, foam around the mouth, this picture is still fresh in my mind. I have dreams about it and it is always something horrible. I have dreams about being again in the room, where they burnt my legs with burning newspapers, where they beat me, where they fumed with rage like dragons, and when I say they, I mean the State Security members. This was happenning at the remand centre U dvoch levov. All the offences, which were included in my accusation, were printed on me. I wasn’t allowed to defend myself. And those accusations were the result of their attempts to get it into the records and protocols. There was a former school caretaker from Devínska Nová Ves, who beat me with a poker, when he stoked to the fire at the remand centre U dvoch levov. These are really sad memories. Memories, which a 73-year-old man still has in his mind.”
“There was a 150-kilo man, a member of the State Security and investigator, who, as I have already mentioned, gave me a warm reception as he practised various boxing and wrestling grapples on me, so he managed to dawn me, weak and simple boy, just with the first punch. I didn’t cry, I remember I didn’t do so. I tighten as I saw it in some books and tried to defy myself. This even enraged Mr. boxer much more and then, he beat me more and more and finally left me there lying under the table. When a scrubwoman or maybe it was a member of the State Security, I don’t remember, came, she poured me with a bucket of water to awake, made me sit on a chair, took my shoes off, and when I was barefoot, she took some newspapers and bandaged my feet. Then, she set them on fire. Of course, I jumped up, I was frightened and I got scared that I would die there, that I would be burnt and as soon as they mentioned White Legion movement I suddenly knew where a bound between joke and reality was. It was the beginning of investigation which destroyed me mentally as well as physically. It destroyed me so much that, I think, I wasn’t at the interrogation for two days as I wasn’t able to go there. Since that time my right ear has been bleeding. An audibility threshold of my right ear is still only ten percent. The State Security member vented his anger on me and left me a souvenir I will have for the rest of my life.”
František Granec was born on February 7, 1934, in Devínska Nová Ves into a poor railwayman family. He had fifteen siblings, however, only two of his sisters survived. His nice and harmonious childhood was disturbed by bombing of Devínska Nová Ves, during which his father died. A few years later, also his mother died of tuberculosis and František as well as his sisters moved to their aunt, who raised them and help them finish their studies. At first František attended the secondary vocation school of shoemaking in Baťovany, later also the Secondary School of Art Industry in Bratislava for some time, but finally he found a job as an electrician trainee in Pozemné stavby in Bratislava. When he was fourteen, he, at first unknowingly, but later intentionally, started cooperating in anti-state activities - people smuggling. As he lived near the Austrian borders, the local terrain was his home and he also knew the Morava river and its sandbanks very well. Firstly, he only advised refugees on the right places to cross the Morava river, but when his teacher, Vincent Drieňovský, asked him for cooperation, he gladly joined a group organizing escapes across the Iron Curtain. Later, he became an active member of the anti-communist Christian organization called White Legion, which gradually spread out over the whole Czechoslovak republic. Their main aim was to help people flee across the borders to a free world, to distribute leaflets with anti-communist slogans, and to win over new members to support this resistance movement. František Granec along with his friends from White Legion developed a plan for going for studies to Spain. However, when they tried to make it happen, they experienced the betrayal from their own ranks, so when they wanted to leave the republic, they were caught at the railway station Bratislava Lamač. After being arrested, he was transferred along with all the others to a remand centre in Bratislava called „U dvoch levov“ and after five-month stay there, he had to spend another five months at the so-called „Krajzák“ in Bratislava. He was sentenced to five years of imprisonment in 1951. He experienced a cruelty of the totalitarian regime and its investigators in Bratislava as well as in other correctional facilities. As he was underage at that time, he served a part of his sentence in an institute in Hlohovec, later he was transferred to Zámrsk, and finally to coal mines, where he worked mainly in an office as he had some health problems. After serving three years of his sentence, František was released from prison under the presidential amnesty on April 30, 1953. However, he was monitored by the State Security even after his return to Bratislava. Moreover, he got an offer to become a collaborator and to point out people who represented a sort of threat for the regime then. He accepted this offer with fear, though, allegedly, nobody wanted him to reveal any certain information and nobody contacted him again. In 1966, he was partially rehabilitated; however, he had to wait until 1991, when he was fully rehabilitated. František Granec died on January 20, 2012, in the age of 77 years.
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!
