Václav Dobiáš

* 1918

  • “They sent me to work in the mines. There were about five of us political prisoners: two Germans and the rest of us were Czechs. We were going to the mines in Halle [an der] Saale. The mines were near Merseburg in that direction. Whenever we returned back from work in the evening, the guard always had to show to the boss that the magazine in his gun was still full. If he had not reported an escape and shooting, he would have not been able to hide it.”

  • “It was a group of medical students in the resistance movement. We were writing pamphlets and giving them to people’s postboxes and so on. Míla Janů – she is dead, poor girl, you can read it there –said one day: ´But we’ll need to advance to sabotage on the railways, too.´ I remember that I shivered at the moment she said it, because I have never held a rifle or a panzerfaust in my hand and I couldn’t imagine that we would blow up some railroad tracks. But this didn’t happen. We had been arrested before that.”

  • “I was arrested in less than one year, on August 10, 1940. I was in the Pankrác prison. At first they interrogated me brutally. I can tell you that there was an interesting difference between the Gestapo and the court administration – yes, my ass got some bloody beating, and so on. I don’t even want to talk about it. But the thing was that the Gestapo always communicated with you on the first-name terms: ´You dimwit!´ followed by some slaps and so on. They had a Czech interpreter, and they were thus ready to handle even those who could not speak German so well. That’s how the interrogations looked like.”

  • “I can tell you one interesting thing that few people know about. They used formal language when they talked to you. They put me in my cell and left me alone for two or three days and then they assigned me into a group. A warden asked me formally: ´What is your profession and what were you sentenced for?´ I answered: ´Politische and Medizine Student´ And he didn’t call me by my first name, but used the polite formal language to me. And it was a warden who said this. The court guard was just so entirely different.”

  • “They led me down to the prison cell and brought me my civilian clothes. I dressed up and the warden came and told me: ´Come with me to the office to sign the release form. We will calculate what you have earned in the mines, and see if it is enough for a ticket to Prague. If not, we’ll give you something extra.´ What a thing! As he led me to the office, he says: ´You’re lucky, Geheime Staatspolizei in Prague has allowed your release.´ Since it was a police state, it often happened that many people completed their sentences and the Gestapo decided whether they would go home or not. This was a thing that one does not realize.”

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    Hradec Králové, 02.10.2012

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One has to see the people and not the regime

Václav Dobiáš
Václav Dobiáš
zdroj: Fragmenty mého života

Dr. Václav Dobiáš was born December 4, 1918 in Roudnice nad Labem, Czechoslovakia. He grew up in Prague, where he attended elementary school. He went to grammar school in Nový Bydžov, but eventually returned to Prague to study medicine. As a university student, he experienced the November 17th student protests against Nazi occupation, and the mass arrest of students. Although Vaclav attended the funeral of Jan Opletal, a fellow student killed in the protests, he was not arrested because he lived with his parents and not in a student residence hall. He began working as an accountant in the Kooperativa insurance company, but wanted to join the struggle against the Germans. Together with some other medical students he joined an illegal resistance organization, and helped to distribute pamphlets. The group was eventually caught by the Gestapo, and on August 10, 1940 Vaclav was arrested and interrogated in the Petschek Palace in Prague. He then served detention in the Prague-Pankrác prison, in the Small Fortress in Terezín, in Bautzen and Dresden, where he was sentenced to 2,5 years, and finally in Halle and der Saale. After his release on February 2, 1943 he began working as an accountant for Koopeativa in Votice, where he also met his wife Libuše. He completed his studies of medicine after the war. He was sent for a two-year study of toxicology to Saint Petersburg and after his return he began working in the university hospital in Hradec Králové. He briefly served as a department head in Jaroměř, but in 1968 was asked to work as an expert on internal medicine at a polyclinic in Hradec Králové. He did not retire until he was 91 years of age. At present he lives in Hradec Králové.