“Once they called me to the regiment. The commandant came and said: ´Petiška, come on! You are going to the regiment.´ So I went to the regiment, it was about seven kilometres. And there they told me: ´Petiška, look, tomorrow morning a car will take you to the division workshops, where you will be trained and you will become a technician.´ I said: ´I don´t understand it.´ But in the Soviet army it was impossible to say I don´t have, I don´t know, I don´t understand, I don´t know where it is, in the time of war. I could also easily take it on the chin. It was not allowed. The commandant was quite choleric. So I was there for three weeks. So I started to work as a big gun technician of the regiment. Once at the artillery battery I got the task to bring binoculars to the howitzer. They had lost the artillery binoculars. Without the binoculars it is impossible to shoot, only in the direct fire. The commandant of the battery gave me three litres of vodka and 24-hours free time and said: ´Get me wherever you want, dig out from under the earth, go to the cemetery and dig out from a dead, artillery binoculars.´ I went to the neighbour division to the artillery regiment. I let one drink vodka and said I needed binoculars, we didn´t have it there. He pondered, and after two hours he brought it. So I gave him two litres of vodka and I kept the remaining litre.” Did you drink a lot in the army? “Depended on how much the executive warrant officer had. If he had, he gave, if not, he didn´t give. It was stated that we had to get bread and foot, hot meals. But vodka, it was another such an act. And mainly, when we were attacking, we were getting.” Before the attack? “Before the attack, but also during it.”
Did you know during the war what was happening in the territories occupied by Germans? What was for example the suffering of the Jewish population? “We did know it. From political workers or there were articles in the press. We knew about Terezín, we knew about Auschwitz, about Majdanek. We did know that.” And what was the reaction of your Jewish co-fighters? “What could they do? The same as us: ´We will revenge them!´ They did, either them or others. It is only a pity that some of them have not been punished until today. They got off thank to Vatican and thank to some occupation armies, the American too.”
“Petiška Josef. Born on 5th April 1921. Kaluž, Eastern Poland. Today it is Western Ukraine.” Could you say something about your childhood and about the family you grew up in? “I grew up in the family of a salt miner. There is a lot of salt-mines in Eastern Poland, there my father worked too. Mother was in the household. She died when she was eighty nine. Father died, he was only forty six. He came home from work at eight in the evening and never woke up again. And he was not at all ill. From my childhood we lived by the river. After breakfast I went with the boys to the river. Nobody was ever looking for us. Not looking for, not guarding. I was hungry, so I went home. I had all my schools in Polish language. We were four siblings, let us say five. One sister died still in her youth. We lived in Poland until 17th September 1939. From 17th September 1939 we were fried by the soviet army. So I was until 1945 the citizen of the Soviet Union, from 1945 until December 1992 citizen of the Czechoslovak Republic and now from the 1st January 1993 I am the citizen of the Czech Republic. It is so. I entered the soviet army on 27th June 1941 already. I served over two years in the soviet army. And then I was waiting long, long, nearly a year, till they moved me to our brigade of General Svoboda.”
“Once, I don´t remember the railway station, there stroke about eleven fighters. There was a transport train with injured from the west. It was completely destroyed. The injured in it were just slaughtered. There was a child lying. It had legs and arms torn off. I will never forget it. It was still smiling, it was terrible. Women without legs, without heads. Killed Germans, killed Russians. Slaughtered horses. So are the things. Such is the war.”
Did you have information on what was happening on the other front during the war years? “On the western? Yes, we did. We had information. See in the soviet army and then also in our the political workers started. Between the fights or so there was information. We had a newspaper called For the Free Czechoslovakia. Or we had also Russian newspapers. I read Russian newspapers until now.” Did you listen to the radio for instance? “Radio not.” Was it not possible? “No, it was only in the headquarters.”
“There was a child. It had legs and arms torn off. I will never forget it. It was still smiling. It was terrible. Women without legs, without heads. Killed Germans, killed Russians. Slaughtered horses. And we drank from the creek where the dead lay. So the things are. Such is the war.”
Josef Petiška was born on 5th April 1921 in Kaluž in the territory of what was then Eastern Poland, today Western Ukraine. In June 1941 he voluntarily entered the Red Army. He went through training in the artillery and infantry in the 136th regiment. In the Red Army he militated between 1941-1944, after that he left at his own request for the Czechoslovak army, where he stayed until 1945. He took part in the fights on the east front, operations at Dukla and at Jaslo. After the war Mr Petiška served in the army. He achieved the rank of a colonel. He left on 21st May 1970. He was honoured several times, he received the gallantry medals - Czechoslovak, Soviet and Polish. Josef Petiška passed away on June, the 10th, 2013.
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