"Well, you'd think that would be good. I can tell you that Brezhnev was pretty fucked up then [in August 1968]. After all, we were all glad that the Soviets liberated us then [in 1945], most of Prague. It was only when they came here that we saw them like this. And we were sort of paying attention too. Well. The Volhynians didn't like the Soviets very much. And they didn't like to join the kolkhozes either. Our dad eventually joined, too, what he, a farmer, had to do himself, he also joined a cooperative in Rakovnik."
"At that time it was Colonel Ressel, who also came from England, and was the commander of the artillery corps. On Mount Minčol, before Žilina it was still, so on the other side were ours, and on Minčol were the Germans. And when it was April, I think it was the twenty-second or something like that, it was Hitler's birthday, and they hung the flag there. Well, suddenly Colonel Ressel, we were there for about two or three days like that, he was watching, he had a tent covered with pine needles and so on. I was in charge of radio communications, and when the Colonel went there, I went with him, from the group of signalmen on the staff. All of a sudden the flag came up and Colonel Ressel was looking around. And he said, 'Are there any gunners here?' And there were about two or three guns. And there were several oxen pulling it up the hill, up the hill. And I think they were six-shooters, cannons. And he called one of the gunners and he said, 'If you shoot that down, you'll get a war cross.' Well, they set up the gun, so he aimed and aimed. And as he said that, I was scared. Because I knew that if the guy got it right, he'd want a war cross. And I was already running around the guys, 'Does anybody have a war cross? Guys, I'll sign it for you! You have to lend it to me! Because if he shoots it down, Ressel's gonna want a war cross on me!' So they lent it to me. And now I had it, the cross, with me, I was glad. So he aimed, aimed, shoot him. Nothing. Aim, aim, aim - and the flag's gone! Oh, that was glorious! And: 'Boris, do you have it?' I said, 'Got it.' So he patted me on the back and honoured the meter man. That was good!"
"Because we knew that our boys, the infantrymen, from the second battalion were preparing to go to the border. First. As a reconnaissance. And that second battalion, those scouts, those infantrymen, they were the first to cross the border and the first to plant the flag. That was the preparation. Well, that was glorious! But then again, when it was shooting, it was falling, we forgot about the glory and looked to get into the woods as soon as possible. Again, you don't know in such detail what it was like, but I know we went through the ditches, then onto the road, and we rushed up the road and did jumps and rushed up again until we got into the woods. And then again, some of the hills. There it was like, the Germans had taken the strip, we took it, well we, our soldiers took it, they advanced and there was another strip. And that was higher up. Well. And there they had already prepared some trenches too, because those [liberated] Slovaks said that they had to dig trenches there too, for the Germans. And so it happened that from three battalions they made one battalion. How were the losses. And that was already on the... not the one, still behind the 534. We were there for a long time. How many weeks, I won't tell you, but maybe it was a month, I don't remember exactly."
Boris Malák was born on 25 May 1926 in the Czech village of Miluše in Volhynia. He went to Ukrainian, Czech and Polish schools. In 1939, the Second World War broke out; the Soviets came to Miluše. They spent the night, took hay for their horses and went on their way. For Boris it was the so-called coal holiday. The real war came to Volhynia with the Nazis in 1941. The Jewish inhabitants of Miluše were taken from the village, and Boris remembers how one young boy was driven to his death. Executions of Jewish families took place in the regional town of Lutsk. Their members were buried in mass graves. He and his mother hid as bombs fell and barns burned in Miluše. At night, partisans knocked on their door - sometimes Russian Kolpakovtsy, sometimes Ukrainian Bandera - they had to open it. Partisans took hay for their horses, stole sewing machines and photo albums. In 1943 the front swept through Volhynia - the Soviets came again and liberated Miluše. The just emerging 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps needed soldiers. All the men from Miluše reported. The boys also reported. Seventeen-year-old Boris Malak also signed up. It was March 1944. In August he had already marched over 530 kilometers to the front - he was to take part in the Carpatho-Dukla operation. On September 6, he survived a massacre near the village of Machnówka. Boris spent the next month in the trenches in the Carpathian forests, somewhere between the Polish town of Krosno and the Slovak town of Svidník. He doesn‘t know exactly where. Because of the high casualties, the three regiments became one. On 6 October, he took part in the liberation of the first Slovak village of Vyšný Komárnik. He experienced the end of the war in Vsetín. In May 1945, he took part in the ceremonial parade before President Beneš in Prague. After the Second World War, Boris Malák remained in the army and settled in Bohemia. The rest of his family from Volhynia also came to Bohemia. In August 1968 he was surprised by the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops - he did not know the Soviets like that. After he was retired from the command of the communications centre in Kbely in 1969, he finished his service at Tesla Hloubětín. In 2024, Lieutenant Commander Boris Malak was living in a nursing home for war veterans in Vlčí mák, Prague. He died on December, the 9th, 2024.
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!
