Krzysztof Jaxa-Rożen

“I had one incident at the time. It was the second or third day of the occupation. I was living in Spořilov. I was walking down the street, and a Russian GAZ drove by. And older type jumped out [of the vehicle] and shouted at me: ‘Padazhdite, vy znayete...’ He wanted me to give him directions. But the sign posts had been switched round back then. So I retorted in Russian: ‘I do. Moscow is to the east.’ I was so angry that if I had had a weapon, I would have started shooting. I carried on my way and heard a click behind me. I thought to myself: Shoot, you Russian trash. Well, but I guess he changed his mind and decided to let me go. I was this close to getting shot in the back.”

“They dropped bombs all over the place. It changes your outlook and what you value in life. When you see a whole city dying, ruined. For instance, we had beautiful pictures, a piano - in short, it was a house of people who had done well for themselves. My father was an officer, and in Poland an officer was Someone. Especially the higher ranks. When you see all that go to ashes, you reckon, what’s the point in having things, owning thins... [Q: So your house burnt down as well?] Yes, they raised our house. When everything calmed down, we went to have a look, and there was nothing to be found there. It was all in ashes. The family silver, it was all lost. I thought, we had it, it was nice, but there’s nothing of it now. So if you own something, you shouldn’t brag about it too much because you might lose all of it. One way or another.”

“Martial law did pose a certain limitation because, say, when we wanted to go from Wrocław to my parents, to Nemodlin, we had to report to the police and obtain a travel permit to go there. Movement was limited among the population, and they checked who went where and when.”

“Czechoslovak Communism was harsher, I’d say. It persecuted people on a larger scale than in Poland. There were problems in Poland as well, of course, especially in the armed forces, but the things that went on in Czechoslovakia, that was unparalleled in the Communist bloc. Say, I know that the Czechoslovak pilots who came home as victors together with the Poles from Great Britain, they had to sit in prison with German murderers or slave away in the mines; they were targeted for disposal. That’s how it was said, MAFDO: man for disposal [an approximation of the Czech ‘mukl’, an acronym meaning ‘man designated for disposal’ - trans.]. So a lot of them died there.”