"They took the Jews in cars to Hnidava, and there was a left turn also - Hončárka it was called. They already had holes ready there. The Jews had dug it all, they had to dig it all with their own hands. It was outside of Hnidava, maybe two kilometres away (from Hnisava - ed.). The Jews dug their own pits and the Germans bammed them down. Some Ukrainians collaborated with them to start with, they helped gather them, transport them. Then they came and told of what was going on there. And Russian prisoners... we often drove to Luck through Hnidava, as there was always something that needed transporting. They had the slammer there, the prison that is, and the prisoners were just heaps of bodies thrown one on the other. And I'm driving by and I look: there's a hand moving. He was at the bottom, on the surface... he must have warmed up, I guess the bodies warmed him up somehow. They took them to Starčevsky Garden. A few of them came back to life there... there were quite a lot of Russian prisoners. Straight off (he ran - ed.) down Starčevsky Hill. That was quite a distance. It was okay downhill, but then there was a stretch of level ground to the river. As he was running down the hill, he was out of everyone's sight. But that last bit... it wasn't far, maybe fifty metres to get to the river... he reckoned that when he got to the river, he'd jump in the water and let himself be carried away by the current. But they saw him and bam." ("Concerning the Ukrainians that told you about the executions of Jews... They told you how it was done? How the Germans did it? What did they tell you? How was it organised?") "They had tables... enormous amounts of food and drink. They drank all sorts of brandies and walked around with pistols. The Jews had to undress, had to strip naked, they had to stand there until it was all gone. Then they (the Germans - transl.) came along and bam, bam in the back of the head. One after the other... dead or alive, revived or not... no one cared."
"Suddenly blam - and we'd got it nicely. The driver cried out: 'What's up? Fight...' And that was all he said, it hit him like this, the assistant too." ("The hit was in lower part?") "In the lower part, down at the front. I stuck my head out, looking for were it could of come from. From the left side. Then I heard a second crash. I was the first, then there was the second, the third, the fourth (a column of tanks - ed.)... so he took down the first, the third, the fifth, then the second and the fourth (in order of hits, the Tiger shot all five Czechoslovak tanks - ed.). He went like that, it was a Tiger inside a barn. He just had a hole to look through and he was taking us down." ("You were waiting on a field? You were standing still until the mist lifted?") "Standing still, waiting for the mist to lift. A few shots at the mounds... I was still the one doing the aiming at the time, the commander was still the one shooting. I said: 'You look to see if I hit him.' And driver could look. Blam, one shot and another, and then we got one ourselves. Then a second one and we copped it." ("So all in all you had how many hits?") "Two. As far as I know, then two. But three of us were dead. And Mauer, he was just, I saw, he had blood gushing out. I tried... he fell back. And now I had loop on my strap, and as I was jumping out, it pulled me down. I thought to myself: 'Well, that's it. One more hit and it's over.' But somehow it broke off, I grabbed it and dropped down. Now I start running... maybe ten metres, no more. My legs went dead and that was it, I couldn't move." ("How come?") "Because the whole time, since September, since Dukla, some two weeks, we'd been sitting, driving here and there, getting closer to the borders. Crouched, frozen, it was pouring with rain, nasty October weather, cramped... and my legs just gave up on me. I said to myself: 'Damnit, you've still got your hands!' So I crawled on a bit using my hands and swinging my legs. Then I saw a trench. So in I went..."
"In 1918, the Bolsheviks came. The Russians came, or the Russian army - and they were already Bolsheviks. One group wanted money, and they knew that granddad had been to America. He had earned himself the money, he was a carpenter. Close by, about six kilometres away (from Boratín - ed.), there was this mill that he had built. The owner's name was Protser. He worked for him, later on he was foreman even. So he earned a fair bit... and with the money he bought himself tenthes ("desátiny" - transl.). Not hectares, they were called tenthes there. He owned more and more hectares. He had a good harvest of hops and some four sisters in America, so he went to visit them. He arrived back and they (the Russians - transl.) thought to themselves: 'So he's in the money, is he, he must have lots hidden at home.' But he didn't have any money at home, he always spent it all on hectares. They were cheap and he always said he had to expand. They drove them into the cellar - that is, my granddad, my grandmother, my uncle and my mum. My mum's elder sister was already married, her four-year-old son was there, auntie's son... they missed him somehow, he was hidden somewhere. They went down there and shot them all. They killed them. Granddad just like that, my uncle the same, they were dead straight away. Grandma was wounded, she lifted herself and said: 'What do you want of us?' Bam! They killed her. My mum was shot in her right lung. She didn't move an inch, she couldn't probably, so she stayed lying. She was in hospital in Odessa after that. They fixed her. She survived. That was a terrible funeral in Boratín."
"On the 16th of April 1945, my tank burned down completely. We all climbed out... or I pulled them out. Well... pulled one out specifically. Those ones climbed out and the assistant who was bare-skinned, he was burnt up. He had that burnt. When we got out of the tank, it wasn't exploding yet. That was outside Albertovec. From the flank it was, when we were attacking Koblany. And I'm running, I was burning, my back was burning, my fur and my hair were also burning. I threw off the fur. The troops around me were shouting: Tanker, you burn, you burn!' I looked, and there flames coming from it, so I threw it off. I ran a bit further, ducked down, and another Russian trooper said: 'Tanker, look, there on the tank!' I turned round and our loader, Ivanko, was on the turret, wiggling his hands and feet. He was used to walking about just with a belt and coverall. He was the loader. His belt was loose, and as he had been climbing down, it got caught. We had links from our tracks there... he got caught on them and was left there hanging, unable to move either way. I said to myself: 'Damnit, now what? I can't leave him there!' It wasn't far... how far, hard to say. I made it in two or three bounds, and as I jumped up in the air, I manage to catch him by the belt and then we were on the ground. And legging it! We ran off just a bit and suddenly boom, boom, boom. It was spitting itself to pieces."
"That was behind the barn. We had a stretch of field behind the barn, and so I was ploughing it. I noticed one haystack, I had a black dog with me. Poodles kept going there and pawing at it. I said: 'What've you got there?' I went to see... I pulled out some hay... some more... I looked. I pushed a foot in... 'No no, I'm not climbing into that haystack.' The dog edged in, but he wouldn't go further - he was growling and barking, but he wouldn't go in. So I put the hay back. And I said: 'What could it be?' I didn't realise there were Jews there. But they were. After the war, this one Jew - when we were away, the Soviets had returned and we were in the army - came to visit mum, she was alone at home, and he told her: 'Mrs. Šeráková, I thank you so much for not telling on me.' And mum said: 'And how did you manage?' 'Was your garden small? You had everything there - vegetables, fruit, everything.' They made stores for themselves for winter. 'How often it was you gave me bread through the crack in the window. Don't you know that? And your son was ploughing there, how many times he searched about with his whip and dog.' And he knew all of this. In the winter, when there was snow, you could see hardly any footprints. When the weather was calm, no wind blowing, they probably sat where they were and didn't climb out. When their was a gale, they probably headed out. Mostly in the winter when there was a gale or a wind blowing, someone would come tapping and asking for bread. We knew that there were all sorts of beggars..."
"We were already somewhat merry... I don't know what got into my head, but I said: 'Gentlemen, I would so like to visit... how far is it to the Castle?' And this one chap said: 'Well of course. I'll take you there.' I don't know what his name was. So we got in and drove off. We stopped in front of the first courtyard, there was another load of cheering, but no so much as in Hostivař. So we were the first two tanks of the 1st Czechoslovak Tank Brigade, that arrived on the Tenth (10th May 1945 - ed.), at ten o'clock (in the morning - ed.) at Prague Castle. Just because of one remark, that I'd like to have look there. There was not a word about the whole time before." (And that was tank number...?") "Numbered on the turret: six-o-three. There were some photos afterwards, some posters." ("Someone took a picture of it?") "Someone did, it might still be somewhere in the archives."
Karel Šerák was born on the 20th of July 1923 in Český Boratín, Volhynia. He comes from a large family, his father Josef Šerák was born in Lysá-upon-Labe and fought in Czechoslovak Legions during World War I. Almost the whole of Karel Šerák‘s family was murdered after the war, only his mother and the son of her sister Marie survived. Karel Šerák learnt the locksmithing craft, but he did not finish school due to the war. After the occupation of Volhynia by the Soviet army he was forced to work on construction of a railroad and an airfield, where he almost froze to death one winter day. Thanks to the arrival of the German army, the whole family escaped internment in Siberia - the Soviets had marked them as kulaks - Šerák‘s grandfather had during his lifetime bought some 40 hectares of land. Thanks to Bedřich Švejdar, Šerák avoided forced labour, as did the other youths of Český Boratín. In Volhynia however, he was informed about the pogroms against Jews and the massacring of Jews at Hnidava and Hočárka, and the massacring of Russians, whose dead bodies the Germans hauled to Starčevsky Garden. He joined the army on the 20th of March 1944 in Rivne, together with his father and brother. His father, Josef Šerák, was not called into service in the end. Their training took part in several places. The first part was still in Rivne, after that they moved to Kiverce and in to the village of Rusov near Kamenec Podolsky. Šerák was given command of a tank in the 1st Czechoslovak (Independent) Brigade, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Company. He took part in the fighting at Dukla, Zyndranowé, Jaslo, at Albertovec near Opava and at Ostrava. He lost two of his tanks in combat. The first was blown apart by a German Tiger, Šerák was the only surviving crew member. The second tank burned down. Šerák escaped both times without even a minor injury. With his third tank, No. 603, he reached Prague. On their way to the capital they met with resistance at Olomouc and Litomyšl, also all along the journey they had Schörner‘s army retreating away from them. Šerák drove in to Prague-Hostivař on the 10th of May 1945, in other words a day after fighting had ended in Prague. He took his No. 603 tank to Prague Castle, being the first tank to arrive there. Karel Šerák was demobilised on the 20th of March 1946, he settled down in Chotiněves in the Litoměřice district. In 1947 his parents moved to Czechoslovakia and in the same year he married his Boratín love, Miloslava Škrabalová. A year later a daughter was born to them. In 1957, under pressure, he joined the local agricultural co-op (JZD), where he worked as a livestock specialist and, after completing grammar school in 1961, as an animal breeder. Miloslav Šafrán passed away on July, the 17th, 2016.
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!
