“My father was an advocate of the credo “the many languages you speak, the many times you are a human” and therefore he put me in a German school. I got a German education. I spend my youth growing up among Germans. I was virtually a German child. The idea that I was different had never really crossed my mind. We lived together with the Germans and we lived well. I can really say that we lived together quite well and that there were no particular resentments at that time. Of course, you had various ethnic disputes but I think that you have this in every society of this kind. Basically, however, everything was calm and cool until the Henlein supporters started to organize their rallies. Then it got out of control.”
"They introduced us into the room - each one at a time - and began to interrogate us. They wanted to know what we were looking for and they kept repeating “dlaczego pani niebronili, dlaczego pani niebronili?” which means “why didn’t you defend yourselves?” I told them that we didn’t “bronit” ourselves because the English had sold us to the Germans. I said: “wait till you have to bronit yourselves, you’ll soon see for yourselves what it’s like”. Then, suddenly, they asked if we had 50 Zloty. I said: “No way, how would we have 50 Zloty?” “So you're willing to walk?” “Why not? Where?” “To prison!” “Okay, so we’ll go on foot.” “I hoped that some of our friends might see us, but they didn’t. During the police interrogation I managed to write a telegram, a kind of a report, to a friend’s fiancé that was already in London. This report said that things were going really bad for us. I had five bucks that I kept under my tongue. I begged one of the soldiers who transported us to prison to let me buy a cigarette at a news stand. I then gave this telegram and the five bucks to the news-stand vendor to send it to Britain. She understood and actually sent the telegram. It did have some effect. They put us into prison and a lot of the guys didn’t make it out of there because they transferred a lot of them to Gdansk which was then taken by the Germans. Those people disappeared and nobody did ever hear about them again. We were lucky not to have disappeared. We were put on trial and had to appear before court. You know, it was a rodeo, I was doing dog pieces at the trial. When you’re in your twenties, you’re full of humor and have plenty of energy. I had a big mouth too and wasn’t afraid of anything. I didn’t understand Polish and I didn’t quite understand what they were telling us. I had no idea what the judge actually wanted from us. There was a man standing behind the judge, he smiled at me friendly, nodding when I was supposed to say yes and turning his head when I was supposed to say no. I took his advice and they finally acquitted us. We then had to stay with the military commander of the Orlow garrison, which is a small town nearby Gdynia. It was a little town close to the border. We spent some time there until things cleared up and we were released. Then we took the last boat to London. This ship took us directly to London.”
“That was magnificent. I couldn’t stop wondering about both the discipline of those involved and the accuracy of the coordination. I mean it’s no triviality to have so many ships go to the sea. You have to synchronize them in order to pull off a timely and orderly landing. We embarked on this landing boat in the armored vehicle I was driving. That armored vehicle weighed seven tons, without any occupants, and it was so long that when I sat inside, I couldn’t see its front. So actually, I couldn’t see where I was going. When I was landing with the car on the beach I couldn’t see the planks for the wheels. I had to do it as if I was blind. Anyway, I got off the landing boat successfully. The first dead we had was about ten minutes later. The soldiers got killed like there flies. We fared quite well. When we landed on the beachhead there was an awful lot of dead.”
“War is no good. It’s always bad for everyone involved. What upsets me the most about today's TV productions is that they show killings all the time. They lie to people because they pretend that the war is about dexterity or agility which is just not true at all - it’s all about good luck. War is boring, disgustingly long and boring, and you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. When you get your soup you can’t eat it because it’s hot. Then the column starts rolling again and you have to go on hungry ... Everything is quite the opposite from what it should be like. And that somebody thinks that he can run through machine-gun fire unhurt – that’s a lie, a gross lie, a lethal lie. They are trying to deceive people. Nobody can run through machine-gun fire and go unharmed. You can’t dodge bullets – that just doesn’t exist. If you try it you’re bound to get hit and when you get hit, it’s no petty scratch. This is no fun. It’s all a dangerous lie.”
“The atmosphere was terrible. I was really abhorred by it. These people were misbehaving to each other in such a terrible way, they were so envious, I almost couldn’t believe it. I was really astonished. When we came there we had our military sacks packed with cigarettes and we were just throwing these cigarettes out into the crowds. We were giving them out to people freely so that they could smoke and enjoy themselves. Later when we wanted something, nobody would do anything for us without giving him cigarettes. I was very disappointed for that.”
“War’s no good. It’s always bad for everyone involved. War is boring, awfully long and you have no idea what tomorrow will bring… When you get your soup you can’t eat it because it’s hot. Then the convoy starts rolling and you have to go on hungry…”
Hanuš Kotek was born in the northern part of Bohemia in the town of Teplice. His father, who traded knitted goods, was of Jewish origin. His mother came from a baker‘s family in Jičín. Hanuš Kotek attended German schools. After Munich, the family moved with relatives in Prague. Shortly after the occupation Hanuš left via Poland to Great Britain. In September 1941, he enlisted in the Czechoslovak army in Great Britain. He participated in the invasion of Normandy as an armored-car driver. He briefly served in English units before returning to Czechoslovakia with his unit. After the war, he left the army and worked as an editor at the magazine „Our Army“. He later worked at a Telepress agency; however, he was forced to leave. He also worked as an editor in a cultural periodical. He met his future wife during the war in England, where they later married.
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!
