"There were these little woods there and at the edge of it there was this sort of hole dug out. We planked it with wood and then made a ceiling and put branches and then dirt again on top of it, so that it would be stable. And as we were doing it, we could hear shooting from far away. But still we continued working. And then suddenly a grenade flew in and exploded a little bit away from us. Shrapnel and dirt flew even up to us. And a second one flew in beside it and again there was a shower of dirt. So the Germans already saw, that things were going badly. There were three or four of them there. They stood above us like executioners and: 'Werk! Werk! Werk!' And that neighbour said: 'Guys, things are going bad, let's run away!' And so we ran. And as we made our waz down and onto the main road, we met with groups of Germans, as they were coming in the opposite direction. ANd it rained and rained with snow cats and dogs!"
"And here I remember it like it happened today. We were shepherding the cows by the river, we did not graze up there anymore, only around the cottages. And so that they would not go on the neighbor's land we had to prevent them. The morning was ending and shooting started, we could hear it. Grandfather said: 'Hey, something is happening.' And then more and more shots could be heard and even the German customs officers started coming up. The Germans called reinforcements in and those, who were shooting, there were many of them there. [The partisans] were on the move and somewhere they ran into a guard group. It ran away, the customs officers lay down there, and started shooting. There was this little chapel on the hill and they shot from it [the partisans]. The Germans came in a car, jumped out of it, and let it be like that and they shot it to death. Even the motorbike. They also had a big dog and they shot him. The Germans went along the stream, where they had cover. There was underbrush and willows there, only they were high up and could see them well and shoot at them. I think that they killed about two and wounded. But they [the partisans] also got hurt."
"And so they called us there to the office. They were from the arms factory, and of what kind... They did not understand it at all, but to pontificate, oh they did it a lot. Even the municipality was hounded. There were five or however many there and they sent them after us always one by one. And I did not want to sign it, and so one of the arms workers jumped up and down and was mean and threatened me. I did not sign it, and so they pushed me away and tried the second neighbor. And he would not sign it either. And what did they do? That they would take our land away and give somewhere all the way in Soláň or Beskydy. It takes three hours to get there with the cattle. And so after 14 days we signed it. And because we were hard to crack, I got work in the forest. And with a saw, there were no chainsaws. In my own forest. We got one salary and nothing for the wood. That went to the co-operative."
Ludvík Stoklasa was born on the 26th of March 1921 in Lopušánky, in a colony near Velké Karlovice in the Valašsko region. In Podťaté, where he was raised in foster care, he attended a general school and to a city school he commuted to the several kilometers distant Karlovice. During the Second World War, due to the establishment of the Protectorate and the Slovakian State, he found himself in the close neighbourhood of a strictly guarded border. He remembers the smugglers and also the coming of the partisans in the autumn of the year 1944. In the middle of the fifties he was together with the other local farmers forced to join an agricultural co-operative. He delayed his signing and apparently that led to him being assigned to work in the forest. He stayed a lumberjack until his retirement. Ludvík Stoklasa died on the 22nd of December 2022.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
