Jozef Strašík

“As we arrived there, we were seized everything we got in Karviná. They took us everything except aluminum mess tin, which we used as a lunch kit. They allotted us stuff not according to size or need, but just what the storeman caught first. We were exchanging things among each other. I got a dark blue German winter coat so long that I dragged it behind me on the ground; the trousers were after the Hungarian Army, blouse after the old Czechoslovak Army, and hats – such fur caps – we had with SS badges! And they shaved our heads. They did nothing of this with us in Karviná.”

“I came to the commander. At first he introduced himself: ‘I am this and that. Not Svoboda, but Sloboda, I come from Bratislava.’ And he asked me, why I was there. I said: ‘I don’t know.’ He continued if I wanted to know the reason and I said I did, because I was interested why I had to be in PTP. When he asked me, if I wanted to hear it privately or publically, I said he could say it among all, so that everyone knew what I had committed to deserve this. So he read that, there were more guys present. At first he read my evaluation from the beginning of the war, where I was really praised and then he read: ‘The family of high technical level and of religious fanatics!’”