"We were not only brought up by the Youth Union – that was already political - but I had also the opportunity to get to know tramping, as my older brother was a tramp. He would say: 'I'm going tramping', and my mother said: 'well, but you have to take your brother with you'. In this way I got to the tramp movement that was pretty much soaked with [the leftist mentality]. Some guys thought otherwise than we did. It was primarily Zdeša Mencl."
"I went to the factory. I was just lucky - it was pure luck. I came to the factory, there was the director, the boss, and next door was the office. I went to the lady who issued the receipts for the doctor, I think her name was Mrs. Vajcová, and I told her: 'a receipt for the doctor please'. The Gestapo was looking for me there, but they had left just shortly before I arrived. They saw my boss, asked for me and then left again."
"It was in the staff. They wanted to make a big bomb. So they took a welded box with just one small hole, placed a cord inside with a detonator. And he said to me: 'we'll turn that sheet metal into a cornet. Here you have a wire from a wheel and you'll be putting it in there like this. [stuffing dynamite.] I had no idea."
"I worked for Herš and in the morning I had to be at work. We manufactured rabbit- fur jackets for the Wehrmacht. We had to meet a standard, it was hard. You had to do it with the hair. And this was the worst. [That you had to go to work sleep-deprived?] Well, no, normally [working illegally] and additionally this. When it got revealed, when I ran away, it was already good. I already knew where I stood."
"I didn't participate in those jollifications. Those who were partisans and resistance fighters, they wanted to catch up so much that they exaggerated it. They would cut the hair of girls. But the ones that really should be [persecuted], had money and they could hide themselves away and survive the most revolutionary turmoil somewhere in seclusion. And they did such a nonsense. I couldn't even walk on my feet. It was horrible."
Jaroslav Pros was born on October 5, 1920, in Chrudim. After completing elementary and secondary school, he joined the tramp movement as a young man. The movement was gradually transformed into the Youth Union. After March 15, 1939, the Union was dissolved, but its individual members remained active, primarily in the illegal Communist anti-Nazi resistance. Jaroslav Pros served as a liaison, delivering vital information between the members of the resistance. In the meantime, he worked in a chemical factory in Semtín near Pardubice. The Communist resistance organization was finally broken up but Jaroslav Pros - unlike many of his comrades – managed to escape arrest, although the Gestapo was at his heels. In 1944, he joined the guerrillas of Vasil Kiš (the Jan Kozina group), and took part in military actions against the Germans. After the war, Jaroslav Pros worked in various tourist resorts in the High Tatras mountains, Hřensko, Železná Ruda and in Špindlerův Mlýn. After his wedding, he began working in the Synthesia factory in Semtín. Jaroslav Pros died on March 7, 2022.
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!
