"After they put us to bed, she started to yell at him. (She was the Hungarian’s wife - Slovak who hated the Czechs) She told him that he caused the unhappiness of the whole family and that we aren’t Czechs or Pagers but that we are covered Germans. She told him that we are on side with the enemy of the border region. And that we all will go to the concentration camp. She completely ran over him. And because he was very facile person he let her to convince him of that. She even made him believe that we are Germans. Her only argument was that no Czech can learn to speak so perfect without the German accent. So he decided to kill us while we were sleeping and then he would bury us on the field and that would be it. With these intentions he went upstairs. He carried an axe with him. Of course it is not easy for a normal person (and he showed some signs of not being a normal person) to kill someone with an axe. Just as he was deciding who he’ll kill as the first, one of us said something in Czech from the sleep. It was something about our mom. In the meanwhile I woke up and it wasn’t really hard anymore to convince him of the fact that we are all right. Although he was in trance he knew that we couldn’t speak Czech if we were Germans. After that he came around and started to cry. I let him calm down a little and then he said: pals, I’m going with you. I won’t tell my wife, I just grab my stuff. We thought it would be a disadvantage to go with such person so I have better talked him out of it. For his family..."
"We underwent a tough training. Some of us volunteered for the parachute troops to fight the enemy from the back positions. I was also among them. During my third jump I broke my right leg. And maybe that was then the reason why I wasn’t among the assassins of Heidrich, because I knew them. They were my friends. Actually I even slept with one of them, Mr. Svarc. I slept on the bottom bed and he on the upper one."
"Those of the prisoners who were not able to pay anything were put in this huge ward with only cement floor. They slept on this floor covered only with hay. The lice were all over. They showed us this at first as a precaution. After this we were willing to pay anything we could."
"When I got back home I realized that the Germans took my mother, brother and sister as hostages. My mom stayed in the concentration camp until the end of the war. They released my sister earlier, but in a poor condition. My brother was the only one who was freed as the first one after just six months. He owned the grange and therefore he must have fulfilled the obligations. But my poor mom had to stay there until the end of the war."
"They started to treat us really tough, these officers. Some cases occurred when Gestapo sent over their agents speaking perfect Czech. The got revealed here or later in France. These kinds of things happened too. We have been accommodated with the suspects, with those who were not been checked up yet. On the next day they called us back again. The situation repeated again. It was very serious, very serious situation."
"We were on the edge of the Low Tatra mountains. It was my first time at the mountains. And so was for my brother as well. We had no mountain experiences at all. We saw the tops in front of us and just told to ourselves: We’ll be on the other side until tonight. Our target was Spisska Nova Ves town. The reason why particularly there was, that it was quite big town and we were sure we would find some dealer who would exchange our money. Unfortunately the snow storm caught us just in the middle of the climb up so at some point we were able to crawl on our stomachs only for we were in the snow up to our waist. Basically we were strength less. I put down my purse stocked up with our necessities just for a second, but the wind blew it away. It was gone."
"The withdrawal began. It meant that we were supposed to take the fight position at certain time on certain place, like e.g. on Loire River. But we couldn’t do that because all roads were barricaded by civilians. The French people were very dramatic about this. If they only heard that the Germans are ten kilometers away from them, they would leave their lunches uneaten and would be gone in no time. Just like that. Carrying only their kids. If they have had some kind of transportation, it was the horse. The German fire fighters were flying above them destroying everything. What a misery. “
If the French only heard that the Germans are ten kilometers away from them, they would leave their lunches and would be gone in no time The French were very hysterical about them Their roads have been blocked for miles and the German fire fighters were destroying them from above
Mr. Vaclav Vondrak was born on December 29th 1912 in Dudin village in Vysocina region. He had seven siblings. His mother widowed when he was only two and a half years old. Followed by the cruel behavior of the German intruders experience he and his brother decided to enter the foreign army troops in fall of 1939. Their runaway journey led through Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Lebanon to France was very dramatic. They went to jail few times for illegal crossing of the state border. They were in permanent risk of deportation. Mr. Vondrak left Beirut with the foreign legion and went to Marseille. There he fought with the heavy machine gun. After the French surrender on June 22nd 1940 he went to Great Britain. He underwent the training by paratroopers and tank unit. Then he fought in the Dunkerque battle where he got wounded. After the end of the war he remained in the army, but he has been dismissed as a ´unreliable person´ and thrown out of the Military History Institute of Prague. After that he worked on the Slapy water dam. He died on November 11, 2009.
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!
