“In the autumn of 1944 I fell sick with serious pertussis and the family doctor Mr. Vytrhlík recommended me to inhale impregnation oil in Impregna factory where they impregnated ties. Since this had not helped, he recommended me to go someplace with a lot of cattle, into a stable. Thus I got to my aunts’ family in Ivanovice in the Haná region where I spent some four months. My mother had to run away from Bystřice before the Nazis and also went into hiding in Ivanovice. But I was not allowed to know about it at all because I would have wanted to see her. She was at the teacher Mrs. Kořínková’s place. After Christmas we left Ivanovice for a family in Mrlínek. They dug a bunker in the corner of a room where they hid us in case of danger. The shelter was one meter long and one meter wide with a wooden floor above, covered with a metal plate. They would put a stove on it with wood all set inside. In case of danger the wood would be set on fire so that the stove could not be moved.”
“After the war, my father worked at the city council. He had to leave and take up a job in a dairy because he had not been vetted. After two years he transferred to Impregna for good, working in maintenance. We knew the secret police was spying on us. There was a car and a motorbike parked at the tennis courts with men hanging around who normally wouldn’t. Every fortnight, secret police aides were checking up on us in our place. We were lucky that their dog did not make it up to our place because Mr. Pludek was hiding there as were one other married couple. The dog would have discovered them. An inspection with a dog even came on Christmas eve.”
“After 1948, Mr. Bartoš and his family had to leave the country to avoid a bad fate. He would have had paid for everything he did and said because they issued an arrest warrant for him. So the Bartoš’s emigrated abroad with an 18-month-old boy. Jiří Štokman ran away too because as a soldier he did not want to collaborate and he would have been imprisoned anyway. Only Mr. Šikola stayed in the country, spending five to six years in prison. We from Sokol looked after his family. We would collect and send them money and food because Mrs. Šikola was not employed and had a young boy. Our families could meet but only under supervision because our house was under surveillance to prevent us from doing somethingwrong. We corresponded with Messrs. Bartoš, Štokman and Skopal in America but we had to bring the letters to a secret police mailbox in Holešov. They would have a look on what was written in there and send it. Likewise, they would check the letters arriving from America, seal them and send them to us.”
“When someone came [for a visit] and [the person] didn’t have time to hide, he was in the bedroom for instance, what I did was I made myself a doll’s room [...] and no one was allowed through that. In front of the door, yes, in front of the door which they were behind - and I sat there playing, and no one was allowed to pass through, because they’d knock my toys down.”
“Well, and then the paratroopers came, and they even broadcast from us, and the interesting thing is that we found out that the Germans couldn’t locate them because of the lines nearby. The railway line passed by from one side and the high-voltage line from the other. And our house was in between these, so it was all blocked out. Except that the surrounding houses, their lights would flash when we broadcast. But that was during the war, so no one paid it much attention. But after the war some high brass came to have a look at it, and they found out that it was the only radio transmitter which remained operating for the whole time. So it was good that they came to Bystřice. (That they came to you.) At least they survived.”
“They took him to Hradiště twice and returned him three days later. They threw him in front of the door. He was spent. Terrible. So my granddad had to go for the doctor. [The doctor] tried to put him together again. That happened twice, and the third time he stood on trial in Nový Jičín, and there he was protected by a friend of his from military service. The friend said he’d vouch for him - he was a Party member. He said he’d vouch for him and that he wouldn’t do anything. And from then on they let him be. Because if a good man vouched for him, that meant if a Party member vouched for him, then they...”
“Well, and that was the first thing we did when we got there. We started digging a bunker. We made a mound in the garden, where they were. (And that was somewhere in the ground floor?) They only had a ground floor, with a large loft above it. So in the ground floor, in the corner, one by one meter it was I think, or I’m not sure, I can’t remember any more. And that was covered by the floor which had been removed. It was exactly between the beams. That was covered with a sheet of metal because of the stove, so it didn’t burn through; and something on top of that, and then the stove. And the wood pile was ready right by it, so that when they saw the Germans approaching on the hill by the bridge, when they saw them standing with their cars, they went and started a fire in the stove. First we had to climb down under, and then the fire was started - no one wanted to move the hot stove. It might not even have occurred to them that there could be something underneath. We had a bunker in the kitchen at home too. It was right by the door. That was better because it made a different sound when you stepped on it, so that didn’t matter because the next steps masked it. But if the bunker had been in a different place and the steps had resounded differently here and there, they would’ve discovered it. (Dig you dig that bunker when the first person came to hide?) We dug that too, yes, it was behind the door. You opened it, climbed inside, threw the carpet over it. (Was there a trapdoor?) There was a trapdoor with hinges. You lifted it and everyone crammed inside. But the loft was better, because it had a double roof. It never occurred to anyone that there might be a double roof. It was nailed over with cardboard, inside and out, and there were some old carpets on top of it and some planks. The loft could fit a lot of people, it could. We removed the ladder and no one could climb up.”
“Mr Sobota had a textile firm, he imported cloth from France, Germany, and he made dresses, neck-ties. He also helped a lot of people over the border after 1948, before the confiscated the factory. He couldn’t do it after that. He helped people out of the country. There were a lot of people hiding at our place after ’48. No one knew about it. They even used two young people who tried to get a hiding from us. They wanted to bait my parents to prove they were working against our republic. They even used weapons, the shot at my mum, but she managed to hide in time, so they didn’t hit her. She was holding my brother in her arms at the time, so that was the last thing, a test of sorts. Except we reckoned that if they’d have known who all was hiding there, where and for how long, they’d have locked Mum and Dad up for sure. But then again, they did it because it was necessary.”
Bohuslava Kouřilová, née Zicháčková, was born on the 18th of January 1941 in Bystřice pod Hostýnem, into a family active in the resistance. Her father Vojtěch Zicháček and her mother Bohuslava Zicháčková were active members of Sokol [a Czech sports association - trans.], which functioned as a base of operations for patriots. They hid many people at home, fugitives from the Gestapo, and in April 1944 that included paratroopers from Clay Group. They successfully broadcast from the radio transmitter Eva - the Gestapo was not able to locate them. Thanks to the carefulness and selflessness of the married couple and their many helpers, it was possible to hide the presence and activity of so many people in hiding. Unfortunately, only until the organisation was infiltrated by Bednář and Šmíd, two agents of the Gestapo. A series of arrests were made in December 1944, which the Zicháčeks and all three of the paratroopers avoided. The resistance members who were arrested were deported to the concentration camp in Mauthausen and executed. The Zicháčeks were each hid separately by their friends and family. Three-year-old Bohuslava had already been placed in the care of friends in Ivanovice, where she was recovering from whooping cough. Her mother followed her there, her father remained in Bystřice. They managed to meet up again in Bystřice in January and hide at the house of her grandparents in Mrlínek. Until May 1945, they hide in a bunker under the floor whenever the Gestapo made a search. After the war, her parents joyfully returned to Sokol. Her father was active in society after the war, but following the February 1948 coup and the ban of Sokol, he was forced into seclusion. He continued his resistance, however, helping people illegally cross the borders through Slovakia and hiding those who needed it. In 1949, he was baited into a trap in the guise of two young agent provocateurs. When they saw the trap would not succeed, their confusion led them to fire a weapon, almost hitting Mrs. Zicháčková. This was followed by several interrogations by State Security in Uherské Hradiště and a trial in Nový Jičín. Thanks to one influential communist friend who vouched for him, Mr. Zicháček was acquitted. He remained under State Security surveillance until his death in 1980. The witness‘ mother died in 2003. Mrs Kouřilová lives in Rychlov, she is friends with the sons of the paratroopers and she goes to Hostišová for the yearly meeting in commemoration of the anniversary of the Clay Group parachute drop.
