“The procession [a transport of injured German soldiers accompanied by German and Czech nurses - ed.] slowly drags on, and somewhere around the middle of the river, one of our nurses manages to throw a German [nurse] over the railing, over the bridge partition, into the river. There isn’t much water there, perhaps up to the knees, the German schwester flounders in the water, splashing along downstream, while the Czech one screams all kinds of invectives at her. The German nurse moves downstream to quite a bit distance, at times falling into the water, then getting up again, then falling, as if she was trying to hide. One of the guardsmen escorting them readies his rifle, aims, and eliminates the German nurse. We see her body suddenly emerge from the water, slight movements in her hands, while the current bears her slowly away.”
“Blanka confided in us somehow, and we accepted that - in retrospect - with extraordinary willingness. When we got out in Smíchov, one of our group always took a sweater, a coat, or one of Blanka’s jackets. She had a Jewish start sewn on to her clothes. We took turns, like heroes, to put it in our satchels, and we went to our schools like it was nothing. We never asked Blanka where she went, where she was the whole day, whether she was attending some school. How she managed through the morning, until one of us met up with here again in the afternoon. Then we’d go back to Beroun, and when in Beroun she’d put on her sweater, coat, or jacket and star again. I repeat, we never asked how come she could move about Prague in her situation.”
“It was, as I say, a fascinating period, because all kinds of people of a different character frequented the place [the Kadeřábeks’ kiosk in front of the hospital - ed.], specifically, one such man was Field Curate Eybl from Švejk [a world-famous Czech satire by Jaroslav Hašek about the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I - trans.], who was stationed in Beroun in his older days and who celebrated Mass in the hospital chapel twice a week. Both for the nuns of the Order of Francis Borromeo [sic] and for the hospital’s clients, that is, the patients. In the evening, before going to bed, he’d always stop by our place for a beer. And those were very interesting experiences for me because he swore like a sailor. He took a bit of a fancy to me, and for some time he’d take me with him as an altar server in the hospital chapel, and that was also interesting, because he celebrated Mass in his own peculiar way. None of that ‘Ad deum qui laetificat juventutem meam et deus meus,’ but: ‘You dolt, pass me that missal properly!’”
Rudolf Kadeřábek was born on 8 April 1925 in Beroun. He grew up in pre-war Czechoslovakia in a kiosk called Bouda (The Hut) opposite Beroun Hospital, which his family had bought and ran. During the war he was a drug store trainee, and because universities were closed, he decided to study at the semi-legal Secondary School of Liqueurs. He witnessed the bombing of Beroun on 17 April 1945, which killed the girl he loved. He went through various jobs after the May liberation, he published articles in various newspapers, until in 1963 he fulfilled his dream of becoming a full-time staff journalist - at the regional daily newspaper Svoboda (Liberty). Those are the years he remembers most fondly. He worked at Svoboda until 1969, when the whole country underwent massive purges due to the occupation, and the whole editorial staff of Svoboda was dismissed. Rudolf Kadeřábek was banned from any further publishing activities. He did various jobs until his retirement, but he never abandoned journalism, and he continued to write and publish under other names until 1989. He now publishes books about his Beroun reminiscences - he is now preparing his sixth volume.
