JUDr. Stanislav Kaska

“We waked down the street, about four students together, and we started singing the anthem. And suddenly a whole crowd emerged and everybody was singing ‘Kde domov můj’. That was because this Opletal was shot in Žitná street singing the anthem. That was bad luck because they started shooting into the crowd and Opletal was shot. The events escalated at his funeral. It was a group of activists, I didn’t know them very good, I knew only one of them, some Jaroslav Hála. And he came to us to the Švehla dormitory and asked the students if they would participate in the protest. I said I would and he said he had talked with the professors and that they agreed. I think that he also spoke in the name of some of them but I don’t remember. And so did the demonstrations during the funeral of Jan Opletal happen. Ii was a massive protest with a lot of students participating. I ran up the street which is now called the street of 17th November and I hid at the Faculty of Law where professor Tureček had a lecture and when he saw all the people coming he kept on lecturing and when the SS officers came in he stopped and said: ‘No, these students have been here all the time.’ So professor Tureček saved us. And when all this was over, I lived with a friend, his name was Václav Voseček, he didn’t attend the demonstrations a lot because he prepared for his state exams. And when we went to sleep on the 16th of November, I told him: ‘Václav, we will all end up in jail.’”

“When they heard [Communists] that Zápotocký got to Sachsenhausen, they found him a nice commando because they had a sort of autonomy. The SS didn’t interfere into this. They put him to the Industrie Hof, he was very talented as a sculptor, he could also paint good portraits. So he came to the Industrie Hof and his commando was under the roof. Later, when he was there for a longer period, the SS officers came to see him to have something drawn or done. So he didn’t experience the hard living conditions because he was hidden.He was protected by the communists and he was also lucky … At the entrance medical examinations, there were Dr. Sekanina and Dr. Prokop, you will probably know Dr. Sekanina and Dr. Prokop was a publisher in Prague, and they informed the communist community that Zápotocký had arrived. He didn’t get there because he was a communist but because he was bungler. He tried to cross the border to Poland, he got lost somewhere and they caught him, you know, and then they told people what kind of a hero he was…”

“I worked in the commando and I told myself that like this I couldn’t last much longer. I was all wet from sweat and I brushed myself with a towel until I bled. Then I went to the office. If you were not moved into a different commando, you had to go to the same one the next day. So I went to the office, which was a kind of a pharmacy and if you went there, you stayed in the block until you recovered. Then you didn’t go to the same commando but you already knew some people so that you could ask the arbeitdienst, which was a kind of a work office, to put you into a different commando, where the work was not so heavy. And when we talk about this I want to tell you something else. A new concentration camp was under construction, it was called Klingerwerk, they also constructed watchtowers and friends said: ‘Ask to be assigned to a bricklaying commando to Klingerwerk and there and there… The foremen are civilians and they will tell you what to do, send you to dab or to do something else … it is mechanical work, you will learn it quickly. Then you will be under the roof and not in the open.’ So I said: ‘All right.’ In the morning when they asked who is a bricklayer I raised my hand. But I wasnt bad luck that there was an SS officer, who wasn’t stupid and he saw that I had a mark on my coat which they gave to students, Czech and Polish students had different marks on their coats. We were all marked for better organization. And he saw the sign and said: ‘So you are a bricklayer?’ And I told him I was a student and he asked: ‘How come then that you are a bricklayer?’ And I told him: ‘I studied a technical school and that I was at a technical university and I knew the craft.’ And he said: ‘So you know it?’ And he took me to one of the new watchtowers and told me: ‘This is your task. You will dab the ceiling.’ But to dab a ceiling that needs some skill… So I prepared the plaster and he came and asked if I would have been finished by noon and I said: ‘Jawohl!’ And then he came at noon and I had nothing because I always threw the plaster at the planks but it always fell down because I forgot to nail some reeds to the planks. There wasn’t any reed anyway so I would have done much better. Then he came and said: ‘You are not a bricklayer, you are a Czech swine!’ And then in the afternoon I had to go to a strafcolon – that was a penitentiary working unit with the Jews – where I was carrying stones all the time. They were building a port and we carried the heavy stones which we threw into the water… And that was a horrible sight. That was such a horrible sight. I was in a terrible state but that wasn’t the worst thing. There was a large latrine where all the prisoners went for a toilet, it was a construction about two meters high. Sometimes they went there just to have a rest. They were just sitting on the toilet and having a rest. Then a SS officer came, took a stick and smack their backs so hard that they all fell into the slush underneath and died…”

“So you spent the rest of the war in Klatovy, a town which was liberated by the American army, weren’t it?” “I didn’t get so much in contact with the Americans. They came to Běšiny quite soon. There were still fights in Prague and they were already in Běšiny. That was something unbelievable, they came sometime on the fourth (On the fifth and the sixth they were already in Pilsen.). They came in the morning and they had roasted chicken and potatoes for lunch, they had their own water and in the evening they all went to their own barber. Two Russian soldiers came on motorbikes. And when they saw all the supplies that the Americans had, they got drunk. The Americans gave them all they wanted. And then they had to go, so they jumped on the motorbikes and left. On the way out from our village, right by he wachmeister’s house, there was a sharp turn and they didn’t quite make it. They were drunk and motorbikes are more unstable, so they ended up in a ditch. They woke up in the morning and they wanted to shot the wachmeister that he had pushed them. They let him go in the end… but the difference was great, it was incomparable. I was on a walk with a girl and an American soldier met us and said: ‘Give me that girl.’ And I said: ‘Why?’ ‘I want her, or I will shoot you.’ ‘You won’t do that!’ And he said: ‘Yeah, you know I wouldn’t do that.’ And he went on and let it be. But it wasn’t so easy with the Russians.”