Colonel (ret.), ThDr. Jan Křivka

“I celebrated my first mass in Františkovy Lázně on September 1, 1949. The parish had been established already right after the war, but the number of believers was very small. They were mostly people from Carpathian Ruthenia and eastern Slovakia. At the beginning we held masses mainly in the Slavic tradition ,which is paradoxical, because while I had been in Volhynia, I knew the Czech mass the way my uncle Antonín Zajíc celebrated it. And we also taught religion classes, in Czech, naturally, which certainly did not lack in quality, because my uncle-priest Antonín Zajíc was a teacher of religion as well, and he even took some examinations for that. This also helped him in his following life, which was quite interesting. We can talk about it later.”

“I have been a member of the secret resistance organization Blaník since 1943 when I was seventeen. It was named after the knights from the Blaník Mountain, and it was a strongly patriotic organization. My involvement consisted of serving as a messenger to the commander Emil Cilc, who later became a general. Another general came from our village, too, and Česká Huleč is thus the birthplace of two generals. One of them was mobilized when the war began, but it was found out that people of other nationalities were untrustworthy. Stalin decided that he would not tolerate anybody, and every trifle was punished in one way or another, like being sent to Siberia, and things like that. My task was thus working as a messenger for general Cilc, who was the commander of the military part of Blaník. Blaník had its cells in most of the Czech villages in Volhynia. They also published a magazine which was called Hlasatel.”

“We are still walking in the skirmish line. They are already firing at us and we have to march forward and to the left – the first, second, and third tank are now on fire. Soldiers ran out of some of them and found a cover somewhere. Our third battalion entered the forest with our famed hooray shout and we encountered no resistance. We thus advanced some half a kilometre into that forest and as the shots were flying at us from all directions, all of a sudden our soldiers started dropping one by one. The Germans had let us pass and then they started killing us from the back. We were inexperienced, and when I – I was the leader of this team – saw what was happening in the centre, I ordered them: ´Guys, follow me!´ There was a slope and a stream running under it. I rolled down to that stream, and so did the others before they got hit and wounded.”

“I was not even seventeen years old at that time. In one recruitment office they refused me, telling me to go home because mummy would need me. In the other office I added some years to my real age, and thus they enlisted me and assigned me to the infantry battalion.”

“Speaking of Činčár: one day he invited us to some party; I met Richard there, too. Činčár was visiting the spa often, and in spite of that – the way it was then – he would always come to the church. He wouldn’t spend the whole time there, but he would light a candle, for instance. We would then meet after the mass somewhere in the town. One day he told me: ´Man, mind what you say, because what you did last time, if some cop had been there…´ by this he indicated that he was not that cop, ´you would have been finished.´ I have to say that I heeded his advice a little bit, because I realized that I could not just criticize everything openly since that might have bad consequences for me.”