Ing. Jan Sklenář

“They dismissed me from school because I was a kulak, a village rich. When the cooperative went bankrupt, nobody wanted to serve as its leader. Their agronomist was sentenced to three years in prison. There was no harvest. And when there is no harvest, there is no money and you cannot pay. The district committee of the communist party thus ordered the person from the agricultural administration who was responsible for hiring to convince me to take the position, because he know how everyone worked. People from the administration, from the district committee of cooperative farmers, kept coming to me for two months. I was telling them: ´You have kicked me out from the school. Why do you keep coming to me? I had been working as a farmhand for nearly two years. I will take the position, but only if you let me finish the college.´ The party committee held a meeting, and in order to save the cooperative, I accepted the position of the chairman, and within two years, our cooperative ranked among the first in the district. We had yields and productivity, and we were able to pay.”

“When Skokánek (Jan Skokánek) picked up the weapons, father told us that they would come. They arrived two or three days later. There was Géryk (police officer Vladimír Géryk) and two policemen and the staff captain Skokánek. We helped them carry the full load of the truck to the hops drying room provided that they would take it away before the harvest starts. But the policemen took away a small part of the weapons after a short time, and as the were transporting them, the whole thing was discovered and all the policemen involved, including their leader staff captain Skokánek who organized it, were arrested. They got arrested and the transport of weapons was thus over. Since the hops harvest was about to begin, father was worried about what to do with the rest of the weapons in the dryer. Everyone was afraid to touch it after the policemen had been arrested. I and two of my siblings therefore began carrying the weapons from the dryer into our attic. We were doing it at night, passing through the neighbour’s house, where we hid them. Certain policeman, Mr. Solnický (police officer Ladislav Solnický), was coming to us, because his task was checking the weapons so that they would not get damaged by moisture. Since the dryer was an older construction and the roof was not too good, we had to repair it ourselves every time it rained so that water would not leak inside. All people who were arrested during the first stage were executed in Breslau, because death penalty was the only punishment for organizing resistance and hiding weapons.”

“It was on Saturday when they were murdering in Přestavlky and setting houses on fire. I went there immediately and I saw the two Mačák men lying under the poles that were used for growing hops, and one of them was wrapped in duvets. But I didn’t know why he was covered with duvets. He was dead, shot dead. There were many angry people. A car with rifles arrived and everyone went to the car and picked up a rifle. So did I. Now we saw a car going from Hostkovice to Vacanovice. We lay down near Přestavlky, ready to shoot at them. But they drove to Vacanovice, turned there, and the German car then went back in the direction of Hostkovice, Velký Týnec and Olomouc. They didn’t go to us. If they had gone in the direction of Přestavlky, we would have started shooting. When they left, everyone was afraid to carry a weapon, and we thus put all the rifles back to the car. And the car then drove away, I didn’t even know where.”