Josef Škrábek

„When I attended the academy of commerce, I had a friend there who lived in Zahradní Město. I came to visit him a couple of times and saw a picture there. And he said: ‘That was my father.‘ He explained that once at night the Gestapo came knocking on the door, they entered the house, took his father out of the bed and said: ‘Dress up and come with us!‘ His mum was crying and the father said: ‘Don’t cry, nothing is happening, I haven’t done anything. There will be an explanation. I will explain them that I haven’t done anything wrong and will tell them where I was at what time. It is alright, I will return soon.‘ He did not come back the whole night. The friend of mine went to school the next morning and when they were leaving the school after lunch, there was a big wall right across where there was a list of people who were executed. And his father’s name was there.“

“I was exiting the tram in Hostivař. I went to Šafářova street where we used to live back then. And when I turned around the first corner leading to our street, there was a Tatraplan car with metallic paint. Back then, there were only two Tatraplan cars with metallic paint in all of Prague. One light green and the other light blue. And I thought to myself that I keep seeing this car everywhere, all the time. I continued walking down the street and I was approaching our house. We used to live in that house with my wife’s parents, with her sister’s family and then there were two elderly people who used to have their own little apartment there. Suddenly, I saw through the glass door that the light was on in our kitchen. When I put the keys in the lock, I noticed someone approaching me from the front, someone coming down the street, someone approaching from the other side of the street and behind my back, where Drašnar’s used to live, the door opened and someone left there as well. But I was noticing all of that only peripherally. I thought that someone was paying us a visit. I thought my mother-in-law invited someone in. And then I turned the key and suddenly, I was in between four guns.“

“There was violence in ateliers, people were beaten there. My acquaintance told me that a certain German ran away and they chose ten others and shot them. One of our school mates, Karel Šerák, he was also in the execution squad. When I was participating the self-help in 1960s building a flat in the streed Pod Stanicí, we used to go to the pub at the station to have a break and lunch and one of the brick layers was proud to tell us that we were all cowards and he volunteered himself into the squad. Even Germans used to do that. When a Czech ran away, they shot ten Czechs instead. My friend, Libor Ekl, was supposed to take three women from ateliers from Hostivařské station to clean. On their way people shouted at them, You German swine!‘ and so on. There was a Czech amongst them, who got pregnant with a German, who locked herself at the toilet and stabbed with a needle and even a doctor could not save her. There were plenty of suicides. Opposite to the pub U Milionu, three or four days after the revolution they were bringing German prisoners from ateliers to Motol and there, as they were crossing the rails near the pub U Milionu some of them could not walk anymore. They had no shoes and their feet were bleeding. As they were half naked the blood stains were visible on their backs after taking a beating. A young boy from the Revolutionary guard shouted with his eyes wide open to some German so I told him not to get crazy as those were war prisoners and should not be treated like that, and he shouted back at me: ‚What are you talking about? If you don’t like it, I will put you amongst them!‘ There was a man, who knew me well and held me back: ‚Pepík, don’t do anything silly, or else they would say you were favouring him as your mother is German!‘ Simply a tense mood.“

“When I took a turn to our house, I noticed a Tatra plan with a metallic colour and I was telling myself, that I was seeing the car too often. I took a turn to Šafářova street, where we lived and when I was coming through the glass door of the house, someone was coming down, another one coming up and someone in the front and in the moment I put the key into the keyhole, the doors opened and suddenly four people with guns surrounded me. ‚State security, you are arrested!‘ There was much stuff in the kitchen, there were my hand-written materials and also much papers with the numbers they were terribly keen on. Back then I worked in a factory in Michle, where the production was ending, those were technical drawings to be thrown away and I took it for burning in a stove. They considered them some kind of ciphers. The witnesses, a father-in-law and my brother-in-law, they were as pale as a white wall. When they finished listing things and books, I had to sign it and so did the witnesses and off we went. They sat me down in the Tatra car next to the door, which was surprising but then I saw there was no doorknob. I expected to turn to Pankrác, but we didn’t. So Ruzyně! We went through the entry doors and down on the ground there was a bag with clothing and on top I recognised my friend´s coat, Slávek Holík´s. It was an UNRRA, special checked materia, so I knew for sure I was not alone.“

“In Valeč I started to attend school again but in a few months the teacher also went to the army, so the Czech school children stayed home. In a couple of days the new German police officer came to our house and with his official German informed us that I was a child obliged to attend school and I was actually avoiding it. With a gun on his shoulder he escorted me and my mum to school. All German children laughed at me, how I did with my Czech school and that a police officer had to bring me in. What a laugh they had! I was seated in the front line and had to read from a German student´s book, but as I heard the hochdeutsch, the kind of school language, I didn’t understand it very much at all, so I stuttered and the teacher kept correcting me and everyone was laughing. At home and everyone around me talked in a German dialect and there were many differences amongst those, even bigger than Slovak and Czech. I was probably resisting so a couple of boys took me after school for beating. They kept repeating that for several days and then my mum had to visit school and talk to my teacher to take appropriate measures.“