Dr. Jaroslav Podlipný

“Like all the other actresses during the war, Nataša Gollová had also compromised herself with a German. She felt guilt, and therefore she applied as a nurse after the war (to care for former Terezín prisoners – ed.´s note). She was not helping with the beds, but she was bringing us tea. One young writer wrote a very nice short book about her, he wrote it very well, but he did not mention her helping in Terezín in any way. I wrote a letter to him, asking whether he would include this fact, asking him not to forget that she took part in this kind of aid. But I got no reply and nothing happened. At that time, for us, when she was giving us tea through the window of the train car, it was our first meeting with somebody whom we regarded a representative of the liberated homeland. We felt greatly touched by it.”

“I directed the school well, and so they promoted me to the position of a head methodologist, and I eventually got to the Ministry of Welfare, which at that time had also vocational schools under its administration. The minister at that time was Erban, and I still remember my first meeting with him. I was still scared, for me it was the first time to meet somebody from the government, and I still remember such a fine scent pf tobacco, when the manager was introducing me to the minister. At that time, new employees were introduced to the minister himself. I can still distinguish the minister’s tobacco perfume, it was emanating from him. I was pretty scared what it would be like, but everything went well and unlike the people with practical work experience, I was studying the Faculty f Pedagogy at that time, and so I had different qualities to offer. Thus I continued in my professional career, later the agenda was transferred to the Ministry of Work reserves. Even today, I still consider the institution of work reserves to be a really good preparation for these boys. They were assigned to individual workers, and these workers were required to have at least two years of a teaching course. Then the boys were sent to work in factories, and that was already different. It was a good system. Then it began to be called work reserves, but later the system fell apart. At that time I got to the ministry of education.”

“From the last ones, I remember the roll-call on May 1st. All prisoners assembled, thirty of them were selected and these people were to be executed, or so we thought. But instead they were released. The day after, on May 2nd, the roll-call was held again, and everybody now thought that if their names were called, they would be released. People were therefore literally pushing forward. I remember one person, Dvořák, my former commander from the underground. When the names were being read, he heard ´…slav Dvořák,´ and he immediately began making his way forward. But the man standing next to him, a secondary school teacher of drawing, who knew Dvořák, stopped him. Dvořák heard the words ´…slav Dvořák,´ and he thought it was him. But the teacher stopped him, and so he did not report. Instead of him they were looking for Jaroslav Dvořák, and not Miroslav. He was in the sick-bay and they could not find him, and then they brought him from the sick-bay. He was ten years younger, my age, and he was from the Předvoj group. The people who were selected were then really executed. So this friend of mine Dvořák was lucky that he had not pushed forward and that this secondary school teacher held him back.”

“And first we were on our own and then I asked our former scout leader, sergeant Kovařík, for help. I confided in him. I still did not know whom to turn to, and eventually Kašík and I decided to ask Kovařík for advice. You could say, in 1940 or 1941 he was not prepared at all, and he advised us to practice fencing, and so on. He did not take it seriously. But we did not want to do it in this way. After some time he thus contacted his friend Franc, who was working in the municipal office; soldiers were usually positioned in these offices at the time. That was how it started. At the beginning, Franc himself was involved in the Obrana národa movement, but then things became more complicated and the organization later changed into an organization called North Bohemian movement. At first the movement did not have any name. Thus we established contacts and following the model from WWI, Franc wanted us to serve as messengers after a revolution. We told him this was not for us, that we had weapons and that we were capable of doing intelligence operations. He eventually adopted us and we became the real core of the organization, because the other resistance fighters of Franc´s were individuals.”