“I ended badly; that I had capitalist methods and that they would not start using them. That I was there to calculate it to work. 'That is why you are here!' - ‘But I was supposed to evaluate it...’ -’No, no, no, that is why you are here. After all, we were given some money to invest it by the ministry and when we do not invest it, they will give us less money next year.’ That is how the things were managed, and that is the reason it ended the way it ended here. It was not taken into consideration, the main thing was to spend money.”
“I turned it over, the other side was empty so I made notes on it, counting etc. and then I threw it in the rubbish bin. They wanted me to give them the application the following day. I said: 'I am not interested in joining the party.' - 'It does not matter, the application must be returned even when empty, we keep a record.' So, I had to dig the creased application from the trash and give it to them. That was the last time they forced me to join the party. Then they told me: ‘You are too old for it. It would not be possible, if you wanted.’”
“It was blackout, so no lights were shining. It was not a problem to cut the wire. We always targeted at the same place close to us at the little barriers. It was a tactical mistake because they [the Germans] started to keep watch in the garden there. The garden was stretching almost to the railway line, there was a pale fence and a hedge of bushes behind it and the garden was behind the hedge. The cables were connected into a thick one that led into the train. We tried to cut it with my friend who went with me. It was menial work, it was thick and there were all kinds of things and we managed to do it. When it was disconnected, the cables started to fall down from the trees by their own weight. And we heard: 'God dammit! Something is rustling behind us!’ Just in case, we set off across the railway line, there was an anti-tank obstacle and we went away. When we were approximately at our house two shots were fired. My friend had a bicycle at our house, he took it and rode away. He thought they were shooting at me. I thought they were shooting at him but they were shooting at completely innocent people. Fortunately, they did not hit anyone, otherwise it would have been a tragedy that I would not talk about.”
“I wasn´t in a hurry with my studies, that´s a fact. The dairy plant where I worked - run by farmers - proved itself fair. They gave a me a kind of scholarship. It was 1500 crowns a month. After the money reform it was 300 crowns but it was better than nothing. Then the “famous“ February came. At university it was the Akční výbor (the Communist Action Committee) that made the political screening. Well, I told them: No, I can´t accept this, there´s no such thing anywhere. It´s totally unjustified, I don´t respect this. Well, then they expelled me from the university studies. I received a duplicated paper, I can show it to you later, that I wouldn´t be allowed to take exams because there was no guarantee, etc. etc. and the working class forbade it. So, I was expelled.“
"Towards the end of the war, Jaroměř was an important place. The commander of the Mitte army headquarters, Ferdinand Schőrner, moved here. There was a railway siding running along the dairy plant to a storage place. He located his headquarters train to the siding. People were moved out of two buildings to make them free for him and in the dairy plant we had to make a part of the yard available as his parking lot and a room for a doctor. He had two doctors. One for officers, one for soldiers who kept guard there and did who knows what. We found some rooms for them but everything else we shared. So, we were in contact with his soldiers. Hitler was on his last legs so in fact whoever was able to fight was at the front. These here were old gaffers, they knew how this would end up and all in all I´d say they didn´t make it a secret in front of us.“
„Well, we were already in more advanced classes and the danger of the war started. First what we had were military education classes at secondary school - gymnazium. We went to a military firing range to learn how to shoot. I learned how to drive. This was our first experience. How old was I? Seventeen, eighteen at this time? And the boys who were most fit and healthy stopped attending school but went to the airport. There was the campaign “Thousand New Pilots“. Then the year 1938 came, mobilisation, our school was occupied by soldiers for a week.“
Jan Kubka was born on 12th July 1920 at Voděrady, Central Bohemia. He spent his childhood in a village - suburb of Hradec Králové. As an excellent pupil, he went on to study at the Hradec gymnazium. After passing his school leaving exam, his family moved to Jaroměř and he went on to study Law at Charles University, Prague. After 5 weeks the Nazis closed all universities. Throughout the war he had to work at a dairy plant in Jaroměř. After the war, he resumed his studies but in 1951 was expelled in the process of political screening as he refused to respect the Communist Action Committee. In 1991 he received a diploma and the title of Dr of Law in retrospect. Jan Kubka died on 3 December 2020.
