Jiří Suchý

"They had 100 percent control, there was 100 percent control of the production of those parts, so those prisoners couldn't have any collusion among themselves, it was an unwritten law that those people could partially do some sabotage on their own, it had to be minimal because they would find out. So it happened that maybe somebody turned a part, but the prisoner himself did it. So it happened that they tried it afterwards, that the rockets fell, that they couldn't make a 100% check, it was impossible, there would have to be a German standing by each one, watching the drawing to see if it was done exactly like that. Well, that's what he told me. I asked him about the sanitary conditions and he said, 'You don't even want to know what it was like,' because they were sleeping on bunk beds, working twelve hours, twelve hours off, but they were locked inside, they didn't know what the sun looked like. And I said, 'How did you go to the toilets?' He said, 'There was this trough, you went to the toilet there, it was flowing somewhere and then they took it out in some barrels, we didn't get anywhere.' There was just a closed cycle that they went through, I don't know more, that's all he told me, otherwise how he felt in there, if there was..., I didn't find out from him."

"They shot a motorbike [the Revolutionary Guards disabled a German soldier on the retreat], they didn't have time to clean it up, so they threw it in the ditch. They arrived at the crossroads, they didn't know where to go because they didn't have the regulovians there. So immediately to the mayor, if they didn't hand over the murderers of the clutch, they would flatten Mirošov. My dad was coming from work on his bicycle, he said: 'I came down to the sawmill and they told me, don't go anywhere, they already have cannons there, and that they're going to raze Mirošov to the ground.' He had his wife and me there, I was still a kid, so he went. He said, 'I'm going and there are Germans at the crossroads, machine guns pointed at me, I didn't think they could shoot me.' They let him pass and he was looking for us, my mother was in the woods with me. My mother took a loaf of bread, some milk and they ran into the woods, the whole Mirošov was outside. And meanwhile they were negotiating with the mayor what they were going to do, and somebody remembered that the Americans were already in Újezd - there was a demarcation line - so somebody drove to Újezd, and there were Americans. So these officers came and they went to the mayor, the Germans wanted to enter the American zone by themselves, so they negotiated with them. They said, 'Okay, we'll take the mayor hostage, let the whole column pass, if something happens, we'll do it.' So they took the mayor hostage, the column passed, then they let him go, and that's how Mirošov was saved."