Ivan Pletan

“Towards the end of February I was released from hospital and sent to the 2nd paratrooper brigade, the 2nd paratrooper brigade was being organized in the Soviet Union from soldiers who had fought during the Slovak State and who had surrendered, and they were now being formed into a paratrooper brigade. And I was also assigned there after my release from the hospital. I went through a paratroopers´ training, I was jumping – first we did jumps from a parachute, then with a parachute from a hot air balloon, and when you passed that, you progressed to jumps from an airplane, first unarmed, later in full gear. The training was held in Jefrimov till the end of April, and from May till August we were transferred from Jefrimov to Proskurov. In Proskurov our paratroopers´ training continued, we were there already as a front reserve till September 1944. In September 1944 we were deployed at Dukla in the Ilava section, our brigade fought there for eight or ten days. At that time I was a cryptographer in the brigade staff, and in mid September our brigade was withdrawn from the front to Krosno to the airport, and was gradually being transferred to the Slovak National Uprising, because the Slovak National Uprising had started in Slovakia before, on August 28th 1943. The brigade was being prepared for transfer from Krosno to the Slovak National Uprising to Tri Duby. That is an airport near Zvolen, the Zvolen airport was called Tri Duby back then. Gradually, the brigade was being moved there, except the wounded, who remained there to recover. Those who were healthy were gradually moved to Slovakia. As for me, I was transferred to Slovakia by plane on September 27th and at that time I was a corporal, I served as a commander of the personal guard of general Viest. We landed in Tri Duby, the landings were still possible there. Later, they did not land or jump there anymore. From Zvolen we were transferred to Banská Bystrica, there I served as a commander of guard of the staff of the 1st Czechoslovak army in Slovakia.”

“I come from Carpathian Ruthenia, during the era of the First Republic this was the easternmost tip of the Czechoslovak Republic. This is where I was born and where I lived till 1939 when I escaped to the Soviet Union. I was born on October 19th 1922 in the village of Bukovec, Volové district, in Carpathian Ruthenia. I attended the elementary in Bukovec, and then the so-called higher school. This type of school does not exist anymore, but it was something between a business academy, a teachers´ training institute, or another secondary school. The higher school, which you studied after you have completed your elementary education, lasted for four years. Then I was working at home, I was helping with agricultural work. My parents had two hectares of land, and we owned two cows and horses. I was helping my parents in our home till the time when I decided to emigrate. And why I left the country? In 1939, Carpathian Ruthenia became occupied by Hungarians, by the Horthy followers. After my school, I wanted to continue my studies at a business academy. But naturally I did not speak any Hungarian, and thus in 1939 I was not admitted to this business school, and thus the four of us decided to leave, and we fled the country on December 1st 1939.”

“However, I was not a party member. I have never been a member of any party, I was a non-party citizen. In Ostrovec there lived a very good friend of mine, whom I knew since the war, certain major Vursta. He called me, and he told me: ´Ivan, you got to join the Party, otherwise you cannot get anywhere.´ I said: ´Well, but I don’t think I want to.´ My father used to say: ´Look here, never join any party, leave the parties to party-members, who understand these things. If you don’t know what is going on, never rush into it, never.´ I kept resisting, it was already 1956. He says: ´You see, you also need to study, to move on to another position.´ So I eventually signed it, in 1956. Then, later, I was already working in a higher position, I was transferred to Budějovice, to the division, and I was the head of the financial department. I had a major’s rank. For this position, a diploma from a military university was required, together with a lieutenant colonel’s rank. Therefore, that was already in 1958, I called on to the division commander, and told him: ´I want to study the academy in Brno.´ - ´What’s the use of it for you?´ I said: ´It is required for this position. If I don’t comply, the academy will have me dismissed and you would not be happy about that, either.´ I eventually convinced him to agree with it. The admission process was in 1959, my application was sent to the ministry’s personal department, and the personal department turned it down, claiming that the age limit for admission was thirty-five and that I was too old. In 1959 I was thirty-seven. The division commander called me and told me: ´Ivan, look, your application was rejected.´ I replied: ´Rejected? No way, I will not leave it this way.´ - ´What will you do?´ - ´I request a one-day leave and I will go there and talk it over with them.´ He told me: ´You don’t need to take a day off, fill out a travel order, I am sending you there, and go there.´ So I went to Prague to the main personal department of the Ministry of Defence. I got to some general, I don’t remember his name anymore. He asked me what I wanted. ´I want to study and you did not permit me.´- ´What so you mean?´- ´Here it is.´ Well, but you are over thirty-five.´ I said: ´I think there are exceptions. When the people of my age were studying, I was shedding my blood for this republic. I was fighting.´ - ´That’s a different matter,´ he says. He called the head secretary, told him to rewrite the letter, writing instead that he approved it and was now making an exception. So he agreed with my acceptance to the military academy in Brno.”

“Our decision to flee to the Soviet Union had not been planned for a long time. I did not run away directly from home, but before I spent a month on a farm in Nižní Verecki for training. And some of my friends were also there. We simply worked on a farm. And the older guys who were there, his name of Katrňuk, he was already twenty-seven, I think. He was the main organizer, and he was confiding this to people he could trust. We became friends and he was telling us: ´We will flee the country, there, you will be able to study. You cannot study here, you don’t speak Hungarian, but there, you will possibly be able to study in the Ukrainian language.´ So we agreed on a certain day. In the evening after dinner, we had dinners there, there was a common room for eating, for all of us who were there for the one month of agricultural training. We ate our dinner, took a loaf of bread and went to the border. We did not prepare anything, we went without any preparation, only with the clothes we had on, we carried nothing else. And we walked to the border. The border was near. From Nižní Verecki it was about twenty-five kilometers. We set out in the evening, and in the morning we were already on the border. We knew the way, or he did, he led us. There were four of us, he plus three other boys like me. At that time I was seventeen. So we crossed the border and announced our arrival in a border post where the Soviet border patrol was. We reported there. They immediately searched us for weapons. If some of us had a watch, they took it, the same with knives and similar, they took everything. They made us go to Skolo, to Skolava village. That was a former Polish territory, but during the Polish-German war it was somehow divided, Hitler left the western Ukraine to Stalin. They escorted us to Skolava, interrogated us, and there was an internment camp there, so they imprisoned us in that camp. We spent about two and a half or three months there. December, January, at the end of January they put us in a train and by train transported us to a prison in Charkov. There we were investigated, whether we were not saboteurs or spies for the Hungarians, and so on. The investigation in the Charkov prison lasted till June 1940. In June it ended and a verdict was read, for me it was a penalty of three years of labour camp.”