“Buchenwald was much, much better than Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, there were simply just two groups of people. The Jewish transports came and went straight to the gas chamber. And then there were the political ones, who were in the so-called main camp and lived in horrific conditions, but this was simply the only place where one could survive, especially those that left soon…. That was us… And at Buchenwald, the camp was a huge city with 20,000-30,000 prisoners. Alone, the SS men could not run the camp or control and manage it, it wasn’t possible, thus they chose prisoners to work in the kitchen or the hospital or the warehouse or something similar… And now it mattered who these people, fellow prisoners, but now in some position of power, were like. Originally, it was criminal prisoners, who were crooks just like the SS men, but at Buchenwald, the political prisoners managed to usurp these positions, and when they had the positions, they managed to help their friends. Since there were 4,000 Czechs at Buchenwald, the Czechs of course had the opportunity to help each other, and they did. One time, a sick old man came. So, they succeeded in getting him work, patching socks or burning pants or something like that, so the man could work under a roof and would not have to do any hard physical work. Also, the prisoners that were to be sent somewhere hard, such as back to Auschwitz, were rescued by those in these position, so they could stay at Buchenwald. They got a different name or something like that…”
“Then they even made a brothel there. The SS men made a brothel for the prominent ones or whoever… they made a brothel in Buchenwald. They put in some women who were prisoners at the prison camp at Ravensbruck, where they told them that if they came, they would be released home in a year. The women worked as prostitutes there, and of course they weren’t let home. It wasn’t even considered to send the political prisoners there. (Was it paid for?) It was paid for… (Did you have some money there?) Yeah, we had some money… (From home?) But I remember it, there was that roll call that night, there was that SS man and there was, I don’t know, a ticket or something. And I remember that once the roll call was over, the SS man said: “Prisoners, those that have tickets, you may enter the brothel, imlaufschlit, but quickly!” To the laughs of the others, those two or three went into the brothel. For us Czechs, it was below our …, to go. Among the Germans, there were many homosexuals, and, of course, the Nazis were against homosexuals, so to stop them from being homosexual, they let them into the brothel. Somehow like this… In the year ’43, when Italy just gave up and went over to the Allies, the Gestapo arrested members of the ruling family and also a princess, the daughter of King Emmanuel, or whatever his name was. And they took her to Buchenwald. Imagine that… She was already somewhat sick, and sometimes she was really bad. Now, there weren’t any women there. So they put the princess, they put that princess into the brothel! That was the only place where there were women! She died there, I guess … after a short amount of time. An Italian princess…”
“They came for us at six in the morning on May 29th, 1940. I used to walk to lyceum and was getting ready as I usually did that morning. I didn’t make it to school, the professors and students were asking: ‘What’s with that Moulis? Is he sick, or what?’ They learned the same day that I was arrested by the Gestapo, my father too, and after that, I basically never spoke to him again. They separated us for ever. They then took me to Ebrach Prison in Germany and from there to a prison in Amberg. They coincidentally let me out on Christmas Day of ‘42, but it was later shown to be a mistake. They let me stay at home for two and half months, and then they arrested me again. There was no interrogation or anything, but I was interrogated at the Amberg prison… this is how we found out that Heydrich had been assassinated. And since I worked in the quarry, we had at least a limited access to some German newspapers, but our friends in the prison didn’t know anything. We wrote to them news or leaflets or reels about what was happening, and one time the prison guard caught me sending some, and I was really scared then. We didn’t really know anything, but we knew that there were awful things happening here. So they gave me as a penalty three weeks in room they called the bunker. It was an almost completely dark cell, you know. And than until the end of the punishment, it was still another 6 months, I was in isolation. I was still worried about one thing. When the director of the prison interrogated me, I told him: ‘I wanted to send it to a friend… so he could know what was going on…’ And he said: ‘I don’t believe you, you Czechs have an illegal organization here and we will find it! The Gestapo will get it out of you!’ Because of this, I was worried…So now I really didn’t know if the director would report it. A report on me or just straight to the Gestapo. That was a terrible time. Apparently they already had me behind the bars - the Germans at the time of terror that followed the Heydrich assassination had different worries than dealing with some Moulis guy.”
“When we were putting together his memoirs, he sent us on two such tours. That was already in the year ’69, when he sent us into the Soviet Union on an official trip. When I was there with Pavel Richter, who is a writer too, and Janecek, who has already passed away, we were more or less a military delegation. All the Soviet officers asked us, and we told them: ‘There has been no counter-revolution here… That’s idiotic! That is nonsense!’ And they looked at us… ‘Jesus Christ, what are you saying! They are telling us what is happening there!’ When Husak came, it was such a complicated situation, simply these memoirs, because there are some chapters that the new Stalinist leadership disliked. And for this reason, they simply broke up our group. He wrote, for example, how he was a legionnaire during the war or how he was against the Soviet-German pact. Examples like that… There were a lot of people who wanted to be in our place, but they dissolved our group. Still, no other memoirs have been published other then the ones we wrote.”
“They arrested me for the second time March 15th (1943), it was by chance that they took me on the fifteenth of March to the Gestapo station in Pilsen. I already knew the routine, because I had been there for a few days. Then they took me to the Mala pevnost at Terezin and, after a month, they took me away again, and I think they wanted to get rid of me for good this time, because they sent me to the concentration camp, to Auschwitz, where the conditions were horrible… The wardens were bad people, all of them. Only at the Mala pevnost at Terezin there was one, his name was Hochhaus, who helped the prisoners. After the war, he wasn’t put on trial, but he’s the only one that I remember. I don’t know how I remember, but at the Mala pevnost there were some 100 of those wardens, but at Buchenwald there were 2,000 of those SS men…2,000! Look, at the Mala pevnost it still went more or less okay. For us, it was still sort of at home, or at least close by. We were there in those cells, there was 50 of us at all times in that cell. I repeat, it went more or less okay there. There even weren’t many executions, not enough people, right. (Did you work there, at Terezin?) We went to work there, had they known I was a student, I would have gotten a few slaps to the face… They said, I remember: ‘We’re going to repair the roof, who ever is a roofer or knows anything about it should come….’ So I signed myself up. No one cared, so we just sat up on the roof…”
Miloslav Moulis was born April 30th, 1921 in Prague. His father was a lawyer (in World War I, he was a legionnaire in Russia, where he was captured in 1918 by the Communists and sentenced to death, but he managed to escape punishment) and worked for the central office of Czechoslovak Railways. During the occupation, his father was captured again, this time by the Nazis (for illegally working on the petition “Loyal We Remain”); he was unable to escape punishment and was executed in 1943. The family lived in Prague but did not stay very long, and, in the year 1923, moved to Pilsen, where Miloslav attended the local primary school and later grammar school (Masaryk lyceum). The family raised the kids with patriotic spirit, and young Miloslav became interested in public life, wanting to become a journalist. When students formed the Association of the National Movement of Young Workers shortly after the occupation, he became a member and was later arrested by the Gestapo for activities relating to the group (the association lasted less than a year). Some members of the association fled together to foreign resistance, and those who stayed were arrested on May 29th, 1940. Miloslav Moulis was sentenced in the People’s Court to two and a half years in prison. He was released for Christmas in 1942, however, his freedom was short-lived and he was arrested again. This time, there was no trial, and he was sent straight to the Mala pevnost at Terezin, and later Auschwitz. Fortunately, he didn’t remain there long, and he was sent to Buchenwald, where he spent the rest of the war. On April 11, 1945, the camp was liberated by Americans. After the war, Moulis returned home (his mother had already died in 1939, and he had two brothers who lived with his aunt) to Pilsen and began working for the newspaper. In the year 1946, he moved to Prague. Since then, he has been active in literature (nonfiction about World War II, especially young people in resistance movements and concentration camps). In the year 1966, he received and invitation from Ludvik Svoboda to collaborate on writing his memoirs. This project lasted until 1969, when the group (including two other historians) dissolved. Until 1993, he worked as the editor of the National Liberation in the Association of Freedom Fighters. Miloslav Moulis continues to actively publish.
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!
