Jan Sikora

“So I was born in Jablunkov, in the village of Jablunkov in 1925. That’s where I spent my youth and where I went to school. Straight out of school I went to work. I worked and helped my father, who was sick, at home. Then came the draft order to the German army. My parents were very sad that I was drafted, especially my mother. It was a sad moment. Then I said goodbye to my parents and left for conscription to Těšín and from there to Leipzig. I was raised as a Christian, my parents were very religious. We were also patriots. I was born as the first child and three years later my brother was born. We were attending Czech schools.”

“I remember what it was like after the offensive when it was all over. We were waiting for lunch and looking in the direction of Dunkirk. Suddenly, we spotted a military jeep driving across the field in our direction. There was a white flag sticking out of the car. It was General Strossmeyer with two other soldiers delivering their surrender. He said to General Liška: ´The boys that are lying their, you’re accountable for them.´ ´What, What, What???´ ´You weren’t supposed to be there. You know we’re not gonna surrender, we’re not gonna stay here. Everything has been liberated, everybody has already surrendered, you have attacked us, so we defended ourselves.´”

„They knew that we had to go to the Wehrmachtu. That we were boys who had to go, otherwise they’d kill us. I know what happened to some of my friends who refused to join the German army and were hiding in the forests. They caught them and executed them. Others joined the Wehrmacht but didn’t want to go to the Soviet Union so they simulated that they’re sick. They breathed, for example, cacao in order to have smudges on the lunges. Or he ate some hot potatoes and they sticked to the stomach wall and produced an ulcer. So they tried to evade the service in all possible ways but eventually the Germans found out that they were simulating. You know what they did with them? Some Mr. Labaj – they sent their parents the execution of their son on tape. He was facing down, tied together, only his head was sticking out. They were approaching him with a knife, filming it. The knife was coming closer and they were filming his face, it was all very slow. It was a terrible look. They sent the parents the tape. It didn’t take even half a year and the parents left. In this way they exterminated those who didn’t want. It was terrible.”

“It was very interesting there. I got to Mannheim from Leipzig. We were waiting in Leipzig on the train station for our transport to the east. This train station was a hub for transports – there were trains heading to the east, west and south. This was around the time when the situation in the Soviet Unioun, around Stalingrad, was heating up. So all of the transports were re-routed towards the east. Our commander told us that we had some 2 – 3 hours time before the departure of our transport. So me and a few friends – Motyka from Louky, Ludvík Motyka, and Karkoška, we left the train station and went strolling across the town. We got to the outskirts of the town and met with some German who showed us his garden. He had these huge vine grapes in his garden and we spent the next few hours admiring his gigantic grapes. Then we realized that our time had already run out so we hurried to the train station but only arrived there in time to realize that our transport to the east had already gone. We were terrified because we thought that now they’d arrest us as deserters. I spoke a bit German so I talked to the director of the station and he told me not to worry, that we’d be taken to Mannheim in an hour by an express train and that they’d assign us to a unit that had already arrived from Hungary and from Slovakia. So we were assigned to this unit and stayed in Mannheim. And this transport to the Soviet Union? No one of my friends who left on that transport has ever come back. They all died in Stalingrad.”

“There were many Jewish girls that had their hair cut. Although their hair was gone and that changes a girl a lot, you could still see that some of them were beautiful girls. We were walking on that yard, it was shaped as an L I’d say and in the corners of that yard there were piles of food leftovers. There was a channel in the middle of the yard and there was running water in it. We were walking around the yard and these Jewish girls, that were going to be transported to Dachau, to the concentration camp, they were sympathetic with us. They were sympathetic with the hungry soldiers they saw. We told them we’re hungry so they gave us something from the garbage that was piled in the corners. We often found a bagel in the piles, it was a bit green already and hard as rock so they told us to put it into water for a while, that it would soften up. They were feeding us in this way. There I learned that under these extreme circumstances you see a human as a human. They knew that they’re gonna die in the concentration camp and we knew that we’re gonna die in the war. We were in a bad situation and they were even worse off. So we became friends. We’ve never seen them since.”

“That day we came to Paris. To Paris Orly. It was about two o’clock in the night. He told us right away to dig ourselves in. Everybody had to dig his own pit. We didn’t have anymore tanks or antiaircraft artillery, so we had to dig ourselves in. The ground there was strangely white and tough. In the night we got under heavy fire from the French guerilla fighters. It all played out in the underground. There was a complex underground system of vaults and tunnels deep under the surface of the city. They were sharp shooting us. The city was completely deserted – you didn’t see a soul in the streets of Paris at that time. Every now and then there was an old granny or grandpa walking on the street but except for that there was nobody out there. The partisans were cleaning the city of German soldiers. This were some of the worst moments I experienced during the war. The worst thing about it was that we had to crawl in these underground tunnels and trenches and climb steal ladders. We were carrying full equipment with us at all times. We were using flashlights to light up our way. One day we were sent on a mission and the commander was giving us such a strange farewell. The team consisted of me and a guy from Košice, some Jožko Štefaník. So it was the two of us and as we were leaving he told us: ´Boys, I hope I’ll see you again. May God take care of us all.´ We thought to ourselves that it was a strange goodbye. So we were climbing down the vault beginning our mission. We had a compass so we were following its arrow. We were walking, lighting along the way and suddenly he got stuck on a door handle. We had been going along this wall several times and we always just felt the ground was shaking – it was the explosions that resonate much stronger under the ground. We opened and it was a watchmaker’s shop. As we climbed out of the underground tunnels the commander looked at us surprised: ´Boys, you’re alive?´ ´Why, Why?´ He showed us that we passed the main partisan hall. Just behind the wall were the partisans and we had just passed that hall. He expected us to die there, to be shot to pieces by the partisans. This is another experience of me. He was a Catholic and told me to pray. So I was praying down there. I was praying to God to save us. It was a miracle that we passed it and nothing happened. Afterwards we were under fire from the partisans again. There were no airplanes, just the partisans and us. When the Germans caught someone, they immediately executed him. The French mothers of the partisans were flocking to the town hall and were begging not to kill their sons but the Germans had no mercy and executed every partisan that got into their hands. Each night the partisans were shelling us, we were under fierce fire, it was a massacre. Sometimes when our trench was hit hard, I just saw limbs from the soldier that got hit flying around. Once there was an impact right beside me. The earth that was thrown up almost buried me alive. Quite a few of us died there.”