“No matter where taiga is, either in the East or in the North, it is always swamps and endless forests... Well, and then there should have been a railway. So that it was possible at all we had to cover it with cut down trunks across and lengthways and then we said: 'Well, it'll be all right now.' The rails were there so we would lay rails. And I said: 'OK, we have got already a bit done.' - 'Oh, boys, not yet, our trains are going to be transported by a tractor, a crawler tractor.' - 'How possibly can a crawler tractor go through here?' - 'Here, we start binding trunks on this side and also on the other one. And a crawler tractor is going to drag the wagons with wood along the bound trunks.'”
“For an unknown reason I got this idea to pick stubs, fag ends. And I simply took the tobacco out of them and collected it in a pocket of my old coat, such kind of an overcoat, a Nordic woolly coat. My next steps simply followed in the way that what I got once a day – some bread, soup, well, the Germans used to say 'eintopf', the Russians said 'baltushka.' What each day offered was cooked and mixed etc. Well, and in order to improve my circumstances, there was always a little market place at the railway stations, they were called bazaars. And I changed the tobacco for some 'lepjoshka,' battercake, simply for some pancake. Well, and after three weeks I arrived with two changes at Dzhambul.”
“My name is Antonín Popovič. I was born in the village called Zlatarij in Czech, Zolotarevo in Ruthenian in former Carpathian Ruthenia on April 20th, 1924. I'm the oldest son of a family with seven children. Our family was rather poor in such large village at the foothills of pastures in the Carpathians of Chustec region. I attended primary school in my native village for 12 years. Since we were rather poor, my parents had a word with me about my going to serve. There was a family whose husband and son were ill and it would be good if I went. So I did and stopped going to school. I helped the farmer in summer then and I helped my father in many different ways in winter. I earned some extra money either in families in the village who needed to saw some wood. Or if there was some work in the forest, then I helped my father in the forest.”
“There was a full cellar of Germans. Merely: 'Něstřílajtě, su tu Češi.' ('Don't shoot, there are Czechs here.') - 'Well OK, if you are Czechs then march the Germans out.' Then seven Germans got out and all of them claimed they were socialists. I searched their pockets, disarmed them and sent them at the back at the home front at the appointed place. A woman with a daughter came running. They were running from their house to the Švidrnochs because the two of them were alone. And there was a man at the Švidrnochs, they put cushions around their heads and kept them like this... When I was actually checking their pockets, she stormed into the Švidrnochs' house: 'Mr Officer, see what you... to me... Look what they did to me!' She didn't talk about it when it shot through her daughter's arm, the cushion..., and the bullet still managed to hit Mrs Kotálová. And she discovered that Věra, her daughter Věra had her arm shot through in her elbow only after the cushion was all soaked with blood. So we remembered that for a long time.”
“It must have been some kind of suspicion but I was sitting backwards to the driving direction. I have to admit that when the Carpathians were loosing in the distance I had some funny feelings, such... well, simply some funny feelings. We were taken to the town Nadvirna in Ukrainian, Nadvornaja in Russian. And there was a retention jail, a temporary one, in the basement. There had already been plenty of refugees like us, on pallets, stains on the wall... I for example had no idea about the existence of bugs. And then – what were they actually? There was an old geezer, all covered with hair. He was said to have crab. Another one was said to suffer from a venereal disease. We were squashed in there and then there was a wood container in the corner. You simply relieved yourself there because they let you to the wash room and to the lavatory just in the morning and in the evening. In the meantime, if you were desperate you had to do it into the bucket, into the container, into the keg. It was very cramped in there... There was some uneasiness, older people, especially the party guys, the Communists who were there, they simply cried.”
“The Prague Uprising broke out and Prague itself rose up, I tried to get to Prague as soon as possible. Well, I succeeded to arrange through prayer on the tenth that we would leave on the eleventh in the morning with the convalescents whom I brought from our brigade first-aid station and placed them in an orphanage in Ostrava. We were officers scattered at different places in Ostrava, Vítkovice. Well, we set off by Studebaker on May 11th in the morning. We knocked our heads against disarmed German division at Čáslav. Everything was obstructed and they didn't let us go. We had to stay in barns in Čáslav overnight. On the twelfth day we reached Prague-Dolní Měcholupy.”
“I entered a house where there stood a woman at the window. I greeted her but she gave me absolutely no reply. She kept gazing at the garden – there laid her brother-in-law with her son shot dead.”
Antonín Popovič was born in the village of Zolotarevo in Carpathian Ruthenia in 1924. Due to the very weak social situation of his family, he left school after six years of primary school at the age of 12. Then he worked as a helper on a farm. He crossed the border from the USSR in May 1941. He was arrested and sentenced to three years for illegal border crossing. In the camp in the Arkhangelsk region he took part in building a railway. He was rehabilitated and dismissed in December 1942. He failed at recruitment due to his poor health condition and was placed in the sugar factory in the Kazakh town Dzhambul. He left for Buzuluk in August 1943 and he joined the Czechoslovak troops. He took part in the battle of Kiev and then transferred back to Buzuluk. He was then placed in the guard of honor designated for welcoming president Beneš. He didn‘t finish his training in the 2nd Paratroopers Brigade because of his injury in January 1944. Afterwards, he studied at an Armoured School in Saratova during spring and summer 1944. After his graduation he with the III Tank Battalion of the II Tank Division took part in the operation at Dukla Pass, at Jaslo and in liberating of a part of Poland and North Moravia. He remained in the Army after the war and worked in various military stations and schools. He lives with his wife in Slaný to this day.
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!
