Mgr. František Hercl

“My classmate Zdeněk Kozák was a member of Sokol in Nusle, and there he got acquainted with some officers who were members of the National Defence Union. They tasked him with forming a student group. Zdeněk convinced four students from the grammar school to participate in it, as well as other classmates from a course that he attended after graduation. Then he also got some friends from Sokol. Altogether he formed a group which had about eleven members. This was in autumn 1941. We were nineteen years old. We believed that the war would be over quickly. In the first years of the war, there was absolutely nobody who would expect that it would drag on until 1945. Everything was focused on the preparation of an uprising and resistance. Our group did not really have much activity. We met in smaller groups from time to time. One of the members, Jiří Linert, wrote a pamphlet addressed to students and reminding them of their obligation to oppose the occupying forces. Unfortunately, a Gestapo informer, Jaroslav Nachtmann, who pretended to be a commander of the Right Bank, infiltrated into the group. Zdeněk Kozák had a meeting with him one day before the arrest. Major Špor, who introduced Kozák to Nachtmann, said that the group already had ten members. Zdeněk corrected him: ´We are already a group of eleven!´ The alleged commander of the Right Bank came to the school to arrest him the following day. It happened on April 22, 1942.”

“When Neurath arrived, we were ordered to stand on the riverbank and welcome him. German organizers handed out little flags with swastikas. The mass of people just somehow dropped the flags in the river. There was a little red island floating on the Vltava River.”

“While in the Pankrác prison, every two weeks we were sending clothes for washing. They would send a suitcase with clothes to our parents beforehand. We would then have to place the suitcase in the door of the prison cell and the warden would check every single item of clothing. If there was a piece of bread in there, it depended on the warden if he gave it to us or not. The suitcase was then filled with dirty clothes again. This way I established contact with my parents. I wrote a message on a strip of paper with a stub of pencil from a fellow inmate and concealed it in a pajama strap. It went unnoticed, but my mom had washed the pajama first and my parents were thus not able to decipher it, but fortunately they found it. We then kept exchanging messages this way. I know that it was quite selfish from me. If it had been discovered, it would have been pretty dangerous for them.”

“Although the activity of our organization was short, it lasted for only half a year and I think that it was not really too significant when compared to activities of other organizations and resistance fighters, the penalties were harsh. Two were sentenced to capital punishment – the group leader Kozák and Linert, who was the author of the pamphlets. Two were sentenced to nine years, two to seven years, and four of us got five years. The eleventh member was no longer present in the court trial because he was dying of tuberculosis in the prison hospital. The two who got nine years of imprisonment were taken to a penitentiary in Kaisheim, the others to the prison in Straubing.”

“The worst air raid had taken place about a week before we set out on the march. That was already in the time when there was a pre-alarm in the morning, then an alarm around noon, and short signals were then used to signalize immediate danger. There were several waves pf air raid which bombed the nearby train station. This was the worst. We were locked up on the third floor and there was no way we would be able to go to a shelter. As the bombs were falling, the building was visibly swaying. Clouds of dust rose from the bombed out train station and the sky turned dark. I only wished for it to happen quickly. But then it passed. We could hear the whistling of a steam engine that got a hit. It was literally piercing our ears.”

“I remember that we used to go to the park by the Museum, where there is now the expressway and the park is more or less nonexistent now. We used to play soccer there with a ball made of rags, and it was forbidden, so if a policeman was approaching, we would climb over the fence and hide. We also used to go to Mlejnkovka, the place is now completely filled with buildings. There was space for sport and games there, too.”

“I was in the penitentiary in Straubing. The wardens there were professional wardens. Of course, strict regime had to be observed. There were also special punishments. For example, when they noticed that somebody put a floor-cleaning rag over his back in winter, he was punished by three days without food, just water and a hard bed. Or when we worked in the countryside after an air raid: on the way back we passed by a crater created by the explosion. Somebody had thrown away was some leeks in it, and we picked them. The police inspector, who was the highest rank in the prison, obviously saw us and he ordered us to be searched. The prisoner, who was found to have the leeks, was punished by three days without food as well. So there were punishments, but otherwise the wardens treated us quite fairly.”