"We were guarded by the regular army.* The corporal had a gun and walked around, then there was a non-commissioned officer and then a commissioned officer was on guard as well, second lieutenant or first lieutenant. We could talk but the guard listened in case we talked about something politics-related. Something against the Communists. There was a corporal and he caught something. The private's name was Karel Mráček and when we were stationed in Klecany [off Prague], he attended concerts in Lucerna [concert hall in Prague]. He thought to himself that in the army store, he could get a major's uniform, buttons and everything. This Mráček got all that and then he told us: 'On Sunday, I walked along the Národní Street and imagine, all the lieutenants saluted me!' He wore a major's uniform, imagine. And the corporal heard Karel bragging about this and Karel got a month in jail or so."
*Note: in the Auxilliary Technical Battalions, conscripts of poor health served along with those who had 'wrong' political view or family background; the ATB were held in disdain and were considered suspicious by default.
"Even today, I don't understand why it took them so long. Brother ran away at the end of the 1948 and they kicked me out of the university four months later. It was caused by that many cases, there were many of them. Those days, it was not the State Security, it was called National Security, they had not developed this thing that they would get to know everything and gather all the information so it took a bit of time. That's the only possible explanation why they kicked me out only after four months. I am sure about one thing, though. Those committees that existed, those action committees, they sat like this and you came there. They had it decided already, you could be telling them whatever you wanted and they just stared in the ceiling and then they told you that you have finished. It didn't matter at all what had you been telling them all the time, it had been all prepared beforehand."
"Brother was conscripted for forced labour since 1940, he was young but he was older than I was. At times, he experienced 60 air raids a day in Berlin. He said that it took the Germans two hours to rebuild the tracks and then the train traffic started again. Imagine that, the speed! The truth to be said, he spoke German really well and English too. He learned those really fast. He had a talent for languages as they call it."
"On February 25, 1948, it was ten below zero. We didn't have the communication possibilities that we have today, there are cell phones and so on, but there were bulletin boards. We learned that we were going to the Castle, to support President Benes. We went in the afternoon at three o'clock, we wore hats, in those days they wore hats and there were ties, you could tell a student, he just didn't have a bag on his back. And we walked, there were six thousand of us, led by Lesák and Ransdorf, the two students who led us, to the Castle - and we were stopped by Nosek's police at the top of Nerudova Street. We were in the back, we didn't know, I wasn't in the front, we didn't know what was happening, but we heard shooting. We ran to the church, it still stands there today, opposite the Romanian embassy, and we had to run back because we saw the terrible danger of getting into a conflict with the police. And it happened that in the evening I heard on the radio that a handful of misguided students went to the Castle, but because they found it was cold, they just went home. Imagine the horror, I realised what propaganda can do. A handful of misguided students - and there were six thousand of us."
Translated by DeepL
"Konrad Henlein came from Liberec, that was Reichenberg at the time, and Konrad Henlein, and that fascinated me at the time - the Czechoslovak Republic, our policemen, our gendarmes, as the police were called at the time, and they were standing on the square, and Konrad Henlein arrived. I remember it was in a Mercedes, a grey Mercedes, and he came from the side where you can drive out of the square, and I was standing there as a child, I was about nine years old, and I was looking at it now, and there was a brass band playing, and the whole square was full of Germans. He just gave a speech on a microphone to the whole square and these people were hooting. For me it was unimaginable, I was saying how come they can just salute with the Nazi salute, which is famous in Germany. That Hitler, we knew that from the magazines, there was a magazine that always started on Thursdays at the cinema, so we had these pictures from that Germany and we were like: Oh my God, Nazi salute, here in our country, we're a free republic, and the officers were looking at it and nobody did anything. Nobody intervened. It was strange to me as a kid. Konrad Henlein gave a speech that just said they all belonged in Germany. Heim in Reich, that was their motto. He was already saying things in his speech that in normal times would be totally unacceptable in a free country. So I was already aware of this as a child and I thought: This can't be good, I already knew that."
Translated by DeepL
"It was really because it was prepared by the Communists in advance. I understood it because I was standing under the balcony when Klement Gottwald was speaking. I was twenty years old. And behind me a hundred thousand people were clapping. At that moment I understood that a part of the nation didn't need democracy at all, but that they liked the rule of a firm hand. Forty-eight, that meant a lot to me, because then when my brother, his name was Erich, it was a little German name, he ran away to the United States and became a pilot, a military pilot, I just got kicked out of school."
Translated by DeepL
"I can tell you one thing - the commissions that existed, the action committees, that's what they were called - they sat like this, you went there, they had it decided. You could say whatever you wanted, they looked at the ceiling and then they told you you were finished. It didn't matter what you said, it was all prearranged."
Translated by DeepL
"Well, I was at the Skoda plant from September 1 to April, and in April I had to leave. We made such pits near Čelákovice that the Soviet tanks, when they came, would fall into it. And we did that under the direction of German officers, of course, until May 1, when Hitler died or shot himself. And such a little pearl, that the Russians with those tanks just went around it, it was completely useless the work, we did it on five kilometers."
Translated by DeepL
Emil Pražan was born on the 15th of December in 1928 in the village of Žalhostice in the vicinity of Litoměřice. His mother was German, his father was Czech. They had three more children besides Emil, one son and two daughters. After the Munich Agreement the Sudeten were ceded to Germany and the Pražan family left their flat in Litoměřice and ran away from the Nazis to what was left of Czechoslovakia. After two months of staying in provisional conditions and living in the Sokol gym in Golčův Jeníkov, they settled in Hradec Králové. Emil’s older brother Erich was conscripted for forced labour in Berlin where he worked a s a signalman at a railway station. He witnessed frequent air raids but he survived until the end of war. After the liberation in 1945, he graduated from the business academy and enrolled to the University of Economics in Prague. After the Communist coup d‘état, he emigrated to the USA where he became pilot of a fighter helicopter. He participated in the Korean war at the U. S. side which led to Emil’s expulsion from the university. He was drafted to the army and served 26 months with the Auxiliary Technical Batallions. He then worked in the coal mines in Kladno for three years. Later, he started to work in the cultural centre in Hradec Králové where he focused on amateur photography and amateur film. He did the same in Prague later on. After the 1989 revolution, he became one of the founders of the PTP Union [PTP – Pomocné technické prapory = Auxiliary Technical Batallions] and at the general meeting in 1990, he was elected the general secretary of the Union. He died on August 27, 2023.
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!
