Ivo Klempíř

“Inside those cells, in the housing quarters, there were roughly twenty-eight of us. They would always come and bring a large padlock; everything there was old, from the era of the Austrian Empire, including this properly crafted massive wooden door. We already had a lavatory, and it was a regular water closet and not just some outhouse, and it was surrounded by a wall, and it was thus closed in one corner and there was a door. Apart from that, there were wooden bunk beds and by chance, I got to share one with Tonar. He thus came to me and there was only one available space, which was on the bunk bed below me. I slept on top and he took the bottom bed. In the evening we always had something to talk about with the other guys. And there was always a lot of fun because if twenty-eight people gather somewhere, this is what always happens. It was not like that we would be lamenting that we were in prison, but on the contrary, there was much fun. So if somebody was snoring, they were throwing slippers at him, and so on. In the evening we would make tea and they would always open the faucets - there was a trough for washing in each cell, and the boiler operator would release totally boiling water in there for us and sometimes, there was even steam coming from some of those faucets. We thus all had mess-tins of brewed tea.”

“The tracked a patrol which was returning from there. They followed them for some time and unfortunately, quite close to the wall which is adjacent to the Jewish cemetery, roughly in the area where Franz Kafka’s grave is located, even closer to the Želivského junction, they stopped the patrol. Tomek and Balík thus moved ahead of them, and the other two, Straka and Sůva, remained at the back. Balík had the only weapon which worked, a Czechoslovak gun, model seven sixty-five. They walked ahead of them, they pointed the weapons at them and they told them to give them their submachine guns. The soldiers did not want to; there was their commander, corporal Hýbl, and then there were three other soldiers: privates Šmatlava, Szücs and Trepáč. Those two, Szücs a Trepáč, were cooperating and they were already taking the submachine guns from their shoulders, and they were eventually punished by several years in prison for this. And our people, Tomek and Balík, wanted to talk to them. Balík told them: ‘Let’s agree on this: when you give us your submachine guns, or even if you don’t give them to us, we will leave as if nothing happened and you will swear that you will not shoot at us.’ The private Šmatlava, a hot-headed Slovak, who was probably slightly dumb as well, immediately started shouting: ‘I took an oath only once, and that was to my country!’ and he grabbed his submachine gun.”