"Just a small mistake on the track, letting the train be cancelled or left standing on the track, it was all monitored. And as soon as they found out, they immediately asked why it was, how it was, and so on. And they were right there... There was one SS man who had a big dog, and that was the biggest, as they say, cattle that they chased during the revolution, who was then caught up there, about three kilometers from our station, and they executed him there. They shot him, that was the best, because he was not really a man, he was an animal, I said. And he had this dog that was able to tear you apart, it was a trained wolfdog. Those are the kind of moments that you had. But I have to say that there were actually quite a few good patriots who were silent, but they knew why they were silent."
"At that moment Zelenka-Hajský needed someone he could trust the most and that was Jaroslav Pechman. He trusted him and Pechman was his deputy. Pechman was otherwise a captain in the ground army reserve, Czechoslovak, at that time, and so he trusted him so much that he simply entrusted him with the weapons section. That is, the weapons that were dropped, not all of them, but some of them were buried in Pechman's garden. What they had at the house. And then when the revolution was over, in the forty-fifth year, the end of the war, they dug them up and those who defended the citizenry when the German soldiers advanced got it. So he took care of that part of the weapons. Pechman himself was always going, everywhere, and that means even at the time of the assassination, they were patrolling the road where Reinhard Heydrich was going. And he went there as a violin teacher. But in that violin case he didn't have a violin, but he had weapons, that is grenades and things like that. That if by any chance they had enough weapons. In short, so that the assassination would succeed."
"Jarda was picked up that day, straight from school. All he left behind a bag with a note in it saying he had been taken by the Gestapo. To let his parents know... Because he thought his parents were alive, so to be informed. But no one was there anymore. And of course they came for dad too, he took the poison... All three of them were then concentrated in Pankrác. From Pankrác they were then and from there they were then concentrated somewhere, and then in January they were transported to Mauthausen, where they were executed on the second or third day, January 26. So it went quickly. And Milena, because she was taking piano lessons, because her uncle wanted Milena to learn to play, to make it a little more interesting, so she took piano lessons. And by being away... And when she came back, she found the whole apartment sealed..."
"Dad was at work, he was at the post office in Holečkova Street in Smíchov, and when he saw the Gestapo going out dressed, he took the poison he got, either from Kubiš or from one of the assassins, and by the time they took him to Pankrác he was dead. So he did just as they said he would at the time. Those were the four who got the poisons, the pills they always swallowed. It was Zelenka-Hajský, it was Marie... And Zelenka's son, who was the messenger, was the one who was going around. So those four swallowed the poisons and were dead instantly. When they (the Gestapo) came, they made excuses that they had a headache, or they had to go to the toilet or the bathroom, and there they swallowed it and that was the end. Because they were the leaders of the radical group that had one task, to take care of the two assassins."
Miloslav Hrubý was born on 22 July 1927 in Prague. He grew up in the Michle district of Prague in a house built by his father before the war. From his early childhood Miloslav attended the local Sokol, where he first met Milena Pechmanová, two years younger than him, with whom he shared her tragic fate in later years. Milena was the daughter of Jaroslav Pechman, the mayor of the Michaela Sokolová and a close friend of Jan Zelenka, one of the most prominent figures of the Czechoslovak anti-Nazi resistance. Jan Zelenka was at the birth of the large Sokol resistance organisation Jindra and together with Jaroslav Pechman founded its radical faction, the resistance group Říjen (October). After the paratroopers from the Anthropoid parachute drop, the members of the Říjen (October) group joined their support. After the attack on Reinhard Heydrich, the entire group was exposed and all its members, including their family members, were arrested. Jaroslav Pechman swallowed an ampoule of poison in the presence of the Gestapo and died while being transported to Petschek‘s palace. On the same day, his wife Marie and 17-year-old son Jaroslav were arrested. The Gestapo came for their daughter, Milena, then twelve, two days later. She spent several months at the Jenerálka Chateau, where the Gestapo had set up a special children‘s home for the children of executed resistance fighters, and was subsequently transferred to the internment camp in Svatobořice near Kyjov and, at the end of the war, to a labour-education camp in Planá nad Lužnicí. She returned to Prague on 12 May 1945, the same day she learned about the fate of her entire family. Her mother and brother were executed in the Mauthausen concentration camp in January 1943. Miloslav Hrubý began to study at the trade academy during the war, but the school was closed by order of the Protectorate authorities in 1944 and Miloslav was to leave for the Reich as part of his total deployment. Thanks to his father, who was a clerk at the Masaryk railway station in Prague, he was able to take a crash course as a railway employee and worked as a train dispatcher until the end of the war. After the war, he graduated from the trade academy and briefly studied at the law faculty. In addition, he was a top athlete in the Sokol. In 1948 he joined the Centrotex foreign trade company, where he remained until his retirement. His bond with the fragile Milena Pechmanová gradually grew into a deep, lifelong relationship; they lived together for nearly six decades. Milena Pechmanová-Hrubá died in 2008, Miloslav Hrubý in 2023, shortly after filming for Memory of Nations.
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!
