"On March 15, we got on a bus in Podivín and went to Hodonín. It was at this time that learned from the radio that the German army was occupying Czechoslovakia. It had been announced the day before. We were driving a bus and the weather was really lousy – it was muddy and snowy, but the snow melted as soon as it touched the ground and turned into mud. Everything was drenched in mud. In Lužice the road intersects with the main road leading from Břeclav, from Ludenberg. At the intersection, the Germans had set up a patrol and stopped our bus. They were repulsive, just by the way they looked. They had a motorcycle. They wore helmets, were muddy and their faces were brutish. They were halting the usual traffic to make way for the military. It was a very unpleasant first impression. They held us up there for about half an hour and then we were allowed to continue. When we came to Hodonín, everything looked normal at the first look. We went to the grammar school and nothing extraordinary happened for some time. Then a different professor came, not the one who had been teaching us normally. Our class teacher didn't come at all. The professor told us that we are being occupied – well, we knew that already. He warned us not to do anything stupid. He said it was pointless to provoke the occupants. He told us that the Gestapo had already arrived to Hodonín and that the Gestapo men were the ones in the black uniforms. But the Gestapo men usually walked around in civilian clothes. We were still very inexperienced."
"When he came back home, he knocked on a ground-floor window at our villa. I was already falling asleep as it was quite late and I was supposed to get up early the next morning. It must have been around 10 o'clock in the evening. He knocked on the window which woke me up. I went to see who was there. It was some guy wearing a hat who said: 'It's me, Borek, open the door'. So I opened the window and he jumped inside. This was after he had been arrested and had escaped. He was arrested on May 2nd and he arrived in Podivín on May 5th or 6th. He told me that he had landed in Czechoslovakia together with other paratroopers and that he had been caught by the Germans. He thought that the only possibility was to pretend to be willing to cooperate with the Gestapo and that he was filed as a Gestapo confident. That had enabled him to go to Podivín. But he told me that of course he isn't serious about the collaboration. The Gestapo agents from Brno were supposed to come for him the next day. He told me to go and tell this to our parents."
"That Sunday was Mothers' Day and the Gestapo came on Monday. It was for the third time already. They came in the afternoon when I was already home from school. My parents expected it to be a bit worse than last time. They talked to my dad in the other room and my mom and I waited in a different room. A short while later, my dad came back and told my mom that they were required to go to the Gestapo headquarters, both of them. Today, I think that she must have expected it because she was already dressed. All she needed to take was her coat and she also put some documents in her bag. But she was basically perfectly ready to go. Nobody talked to me and I stayed alone at home. As they were leaving I looked out of the window. I saw how the door of the black car was shut and my parents disappeared behind it. Then the car left and of course I haven't seen them since. They took them to Brno. We naively thought that they will certainly let our mom come back after the interrogation. It didn't happen. They kept them there until December; my dad was in Kouničky and my mom in Cejl."
"I believe that you have to resist evil. Resist all the villains, criminals and the things that happened during the war. Of course, it all depends on the situation, if you're actually capable of resisting at the moment or if by your actions you will inflict more damage than by not acting. The most important thing, however, is to be persistent once you've started because the biggest mistake is to stop half way through. You've got to hold out till the end. You've got to be persistent in what you do. When my brother came back home my father said that cooperating with the Gestapo was out of the question. There was no debate about this. We wouldn't collaborate with them even if our non-obedience should result in the persecution of the family. He understood that Libor couldn't remain in the hands of the Gestapo. So I think that my dad meant that if something is worth it and once you've started it, you should finish it at all cost. I think the same."
Milan Zapletal was born on October 23, 1924, in Velké Bílovice in the south-east of Moravia. He grew up in the little town of Podivín. His oldest brother, Libor, left at the beginning of the occupation and went to Britain to fight Nazism. He became a member of the Bivouac paratroop unit and together with the other paratroopers landed in Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, soon after his landing, he was arrested and forced to cooperate with the Gestapo. He pretended to accept the cooperation offer of the Gestapo but in reality he was planning an escape which he carried out. After he escaped from the Gestapo, he went into hiding in the region of Valašsku and other places in Moravia. Meanwhile, his parents and his brother Lumír were deported to a concentration camp. Milan Zapletal, at that time a 15-year old student of a grammar school in Hodonín, was left home alone. Eventually, the Gestapo came for him as well. He was transported to Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. His brother Libor tried to escape to Switzerland under a false identity but he was arrested at the train station in Karlsruhe. Afterwards, he was deported to the Kounic dormitories in Brno where his true identity was revealed. After he was revealed, he was sent to solitary confinement in the Mauthausen concentration camp. It was in Mauthausen on September 27, 1942, that Libor Zapletal was hanged. The only ones to survive the war were Milan Zapletal and his brother Lumír Zapletal. After the liberation of Czechoslovakia, Milan Zapletal studied medicine and became a doctor.
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!
