"From my school experiences I remember March 15, the occupation, the Germans. It was a Wednesday. I was at school, the teacher was crying all morning long. But we went out and saw the Germans on those tricycles and their machineguns. As they were driving through, it started to snow and there was 23 cm of fresh snow. Minus twenty degrees, around March 20. The German engines froze up."
"It was guarded all the time, even in the church. On one side there were some gypsies. So they would take pictures of those leaving the church and walking into the sacristy. Everything was simply under permanent oversight. When I was in Nové Město pod Smrkem, they guarded me there, too. What time I went to bed, what time I woke up, everything was monitored."
"The guerrillas began to shoot at the German convoy of cars. The Germans got out of the cars and developed a skirmish line and when they noticed that the attackers were shooting at them from the church tower, they fired back with panzerfausts and the tower took a couple of hits. They moved to Kamenice to cover themselves against those so-called partisans. In Rohozná, they pulled the partisans out of the basements. Then they went to Kamenice and started shooting at our people. Some fled into the fields but others weren’t so lucky. For example the Pilař girls who just got out of the building. They got shot."
"It was different, maybe the kulaks, or if they needed to get rid of somebody at the National Committee he was sent to PTP. Some were later released, but they would not free us theologians. They transferred the headquarters from Libavá to Rajhrad . There we expected our fate. "
"We came to Orlová and they led us from the train. There were gunmen with machine guns and they led us there as convicts. Well, it was quite a hard work at the mine. And there were informers there as well. They would spy on us. The informers were at the dormitory, watching us and reporting on us. I had a rather bad report."
František Šotola was born on October 12, 1928, in Trhová Kamenice. He spent a large part of his youth in the war when the town he lived in was occupied by German troops. At the end of the war in May 1945, he became the witness of dramatic events, notably a conflict between the guerrillas and the Germans in Trhová Kamenice itself and an Allied bombing in Ždírec. After the war, František Šotola attended high school and then a seminary in Chotěboř. Even before he had the possibility to complete the seminary and become ordained as a priest, he was drafted for compulsory military service to the auxiliary military battalions (so-called “PTP”). During his military service, he worked mostly as a worker at construction sites in different locations throughout the whole country. He also spent a short time in the Orlová mine. After he was released from military service in 1953, he continued to work as a construction worker. In 1967, František Šotola got the opportunity to complete his religious education at a seminary in Litoměřice. He was finally ordained in 1971 and subsequently worked at various parishes. Since 1983, he was in charge of the church in Náchod, where he experienced the demonstrations in 1989 and the fall of the communist regime. Since 2001, he’s been serving in the parish of Slavoňov where he came at the request of the local nuns.
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