Ing. Jiří Kozel

"Now imagine that at the end of May, we were all called together in a big meeting room at the National Committee, that is, at the town hall - today it's called the town hall as well. I was expecting, pardon me for saying so, at least some thanks for my month of work. From morning till night, or even at night, I guarded some apartments or warehouses with a rifle in my hand. And this Milan Moučka spoke clearly. He stood up: 'Whoever is not a member of the Communist Party, leave the room immediately.' I threw my rifle over my shoulder and left the German parademarsch through the middle. I was the only one. Then I found out from the documents that none of them, not even the later mayor or the later Antonín... I can't remember his name. It's just that all these prominent didn't join the party until the 26th or 28th of May."

"On the seventh of May, I received orders from him - from Lieutenant Kotrba - to go to Hruškové Dvory, where a group of about 30 or 50 Hungarians was staying, and try to negotiate whether they would lay down their arms. But he explicitly told me: 'No weapons and no conflict under any circumstances. Perhaps even get arrested, but don't fight.' So we went to Hruškové Dvory. The Hungarian crew was unarmed. It was a farmhouse that was empty. They had it lined up on racks. Simply, I don't know, 40 or 50 different types of rifles. The sergeant who let me in let me try to load each type of weapon because they had some Hungarian - World War I - ammunition for it. And he still had, I think, a Parabella or a big 9mm revolver, their commander. They were willing to give it up immediately but with the commander's consent. If we had said, 'Well, we're confiscating it,' and loaded it on our backs, we would have walked away with it. But we went out in front of the house, and in the meantime, two people arrived in an open off-road military vehicle - an automatic on the chest, and the other one was carrying a revolver. Gestapo, in SS uniform. So we were picked up, and an hour after we were locked up, martial law was declared in Jihlava."