Ing. Jaroslav Vesecký

“Students were always the vanguard of anti-German acts. When I was going to Velvarská Street, there was the Masaryk Student Residence Hall opposite the building. I saw Germans who were forcing the students from the residence hall get into trucks and they were transporting them somewhere to prisons. Then they closed down universities.”

“Father’s friends were meeting in our home and they were always monitoring and assessing the political situation. We had a large map of Europe at home, rolled up behind the wardrobe. Dad would always pull it out and then discuss the political situation with his friends over the map. (During the war – ed.’s note) people had to have the shortwave device removed from their radios so that they would not be able to listen to foreign radio broadcast. But father had a friend who was an amateur radio operator, and he made a shortwave coil for him. They connected the coil to the antenna and they were listening to broadcast from London and Moscow on short waves. This way they knew what the situation really was.”

“A branch called State Defense Guard was formed from among Czechs and local inhabitants who sided with Czechs. These units were armed, they had light weapons, grenades and guns and a few submachine guns. They were assisting in operations against terrorists in this way. However, it elicited a counter-reaction. Organizers of terrorist acts started eliminating members of the State Defense Guard.”