Pravoslav Špoula

* 1929

  • “A man came there who spoke Czech, and he said: ‘What did you do in Bohemia? They’re looking for you even over radio. Did you kill someone?’ They were searching for me here over radio every morning after eight o’clock. I gaped at him all a-goggle. ‘No, I just hate it when someone keeps ordering me around.’ He said: ‘Are you a political one? Where you in prison?’ ‘I was in Kladno, at Zápotocký Mine, but I escaped from the camp. I won’t slave away for anyone. They should’ve shot me and I’d have peace. But they didn’t shoot me.”

  • “I went to Frankfurt to the consulate and said: ‘Excuse me, I’m a former fugitive. Could you give me a forty-eight-hour permit to attend my mother’s funeral?’ ‘I’ll have to ask. Come tomorrow.’ I came, and they said: ‘No, you’re an undesirable person in Czechoslovakia.’ I said: ‘What for? I wasn’t convicted of anything there. You lot here are scoundrels, you’ll end up badly.’ And two years later they did. That was the first time I got into such a fury that, if I hadn’t been taken out by German policemen, I’d have done something to them and the Germans would’ve locked me up perhaps for five years. When they don’t even let you in for a funeral...”

  • “There was shooting. We were in a ditch near Komořany, where there are walls. The lieutenant says we have to go forward. So we did, and suddenly we were surrounded. The SS had branches in their helmets, they were crawling, and we were a group of greenhorns who wanted to fight. So we fell captive. It was getting towards evening and our leader asked who would take a message about our situation to Commander Šebestík, who was moving up from the other side to protect the bridge across the Vltava. I said I’d try. ‘But they’ll shoot you.’ I said: ‘I’ll try to escape here through this ditch.’ So I escaped. I was young and they stayed there, and then two days later they shot them all.”

  • “You see, I was saved by one man. He’s dead now. After I was in Železná Ruda, he was deputy to the commandant. At that time the place was headed by Šisl, or some such. Back then I came there with one other person. I wanted to get him and two others over the border. One was a pharmacist, and he had two women there and children, and he cried that... I said I’d help. I helped him, and then another one came and they caught me. They deputy said: ‘As long as the secret police don’t get their hands on you. I’ll say that you’re ill. We’ll write a report that you wanted to cross the borders because you feel ill and they’d cure you there.’ So he helped so that State Security didn’t get their hands on me, and they escorted me straight to Kladno instead.”

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At that time crossing the borders wasn’t dangerous yet, especially when I knew where the gaps were

Pravoslav Špoula - 1944
Pravoslav Špoula - 1944
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Pravoslav Špoula was born on 23 September 1929 in Prague. As a mere boy of fifteen he took part in the defence of Prague during the Prague Revolt. He was with a group of sixteen men who defended the steel bridge over the Vltava connecting Zbraslav with Březanské Valley. In the night from the 6 to 7 May 1945 the bridge was approached by a strong German unit with tank support, which managed to surround the resistance group and capture them. Apparently, only Pravoslav Špoula was able to escape, and he was the only one of the group to survive in the end. As a veteran „barricader“, shortly after the war he became a member of the National Defence Corps (NDC, the state police), and he then served at the Committee for Interior National Security and later at a border guard unit in Železná Ruda. He left from the NDC for health reasons, and in 1949 he supposedly helped four people cross the borders to Germany. He attempted the same himself, but he was caught and imprisoned in a forced labour camp in Kladno. With the help of one civilian employee he managed to escape before his trial took place, finally succeeding in crossing the borders to Germany. He found civil employment as an orderly at Medical Command, an organisation that provided medical services to the American army. He returned to Czechoslovakia in 1990, after forty-one years of emigration. He now lives in Pardubice.