"As a boy, I was getting to know members of partisan groups, which functioned there in 1943. I became a partisan. But I was still young, not even eighteen. Despite all of that, I was a good assistant for the managing body because I knew the country perfectly. I had a bike so I could ride and accompany. I was inconspicuous for the Germans there. So I worked in Eastern Slovakia and even got to know soldiers. I was particularly interested in partisans' lives who were doing a great inconvenience to the Germans."
"They got so close to each other in the combat that there was just a minor difference between the Russians and ours. They would fight shoulder to shoulder in one village. The fact is that the Russians had a bit tougher morale. They experienced and saw with their own eyes many murdered Russian citizens. Some of them took part in heavy combat and that steeled them."
"At that time, I was already a commander of a platoon. We did some violent scouting in Slovakia and I was fighting against the Germans. I got a hit and after that, I also got a splinter from a hand-grenade, that a German threw on me. There, I was displaced from battle. I didn’t continue because I couldn’t and I returned."
"Well, it is an unpleasant feeling. First of all, I was young, not even nineteen years old. So I started to regret that I was ending life so young. I thought I’d die. A sort of fever came up and I saw my blood on me. Naturally, I couldn’t walk, so I felt like ending my life."
"We had the most casualties in Liptovský Mikuláš, where our scouting unit really didn’t act properly. There was a distillery there and they drank some of the beverages. The Germans could speak Russian, so by that they somewhat gained control of our units and caused serious damage to them. But then it came back to balance where new soldiers were set in and we would progress further and further. The second attack on Liptovský Mikuláš was successful and quite alright."
Jan Jakubo was born in 1925 in a family of a Slovak farmer. He attended elementary school and before he could study further, the war broke out. In 1943, he started to work as a contact man in a guerilla group in Eastern Slovakia. After a year according to the movement of the front, he became a soldier and soon became unit leader. He went through heavy combat in Svoboda‘s army- from Dukla through Prešov to Žilina. The Germans caused serious damage to the young soldiers who did not have sufficient training, had inadequate clothing, food-supply, and lousy Soviet sub-machine guns. At a reconnaissance by Žilina, Jakubo was seriously wounded, which excluded him from further combat. He had a lung wound and crushed shoulder and spent three weeks in a hospital in Rožumberok, where there was hardly any staff. They released him to home treatment. However, to get home was hardly possible and it took him two weeks before he finally returned. After the end of the war, Jan Jakubo became a professional soldier. In 1945, he was admitted to a Military Academy in Hranice and only a year later, he became an officer. He became a member of the Communist Party and became friends with general Svoboda and minister Dzúr. In the years to come, he served as a border guard at the Western border. Until his death in 2011 he lived in Vyškov and was active in the Association of fighters for freedom.
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!
