„I remember a moment in our pool just near the customs office. A boy was sunbathing there and had a swastika cut out of paper. He put it on his chest intending to keep the skin white creating the sign. It got me upset, but he was five years older, almost adult or a teenager, so I could not do anything about it. But I still feel how upset I got.“
„It was some time in September 1938 and I remember the leaving in front of my eyes. Daddy and mummy each had a suitcase in their arms and we boys had small rucksacks on our backs. Dad took us to the other end of Zuckmantl´with a gun on his back. He took us to the railway. It was all we could carry. Those suitcases and a little rucksack.“
„I walked across todays Masarykovo square and the Germans were marching. Wearing white knee socks rejoicing: ‚Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Sieg Heil!‘ And who would not raise his hand up, he´d get the beating. When I saw it all, I jumped back into the house as I did not want to salute that way. It was out of any question. I didn’t wish to get beaten by the horde, so I jumped in and hid there.“
Miloslav Janda was born on 19 May, 1929 in Píšt in Hlučínsko in a family of Italian legionnaire and a member of the customs guard, who watched the Czechoslovak and German border against smugglers. After a hand grenade attach to the house, where Janda family lived his father was transferred to Zuckmantl, nowadays Zlaté Hory in Sudeten. Miloslav Janda spent several childhood years there in a natural co-habitat of Germans and Czechs in a calm and clean town under the Jeseníky mountains. Gradually he witnessed a growing split between the German majority and Czech minority there, forming of State protection guards and arrival of the Czechoslovak army to Sudeten during mobilisation in September 1938. In autumn the Jandas were amongst thousand Czech families, which had to go inland due to Munich agreement. They survived war in Rajhrad in South Moravia. In 1950s Miloslav Janda finished his studies at the construction faculty in Brno, water constructions department, and worked in the field until retirement. He was the chief protectant of the water works Šance in Beskydy built in 1960s.
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