Antonín Kuthan

“It was probably around noon. I was already home from school and my mom was there, so it was probably after lunch. They simply came in and they ordered us to get out of our flat, and so we went to the neighbours who lived on the floor above us. We lived on the first floor and they on the second. Then we got back to our flat, but they led me away. We went to the apartment of my aunt and uncle; they lived in a nearby street, also on the first floor like us. We went there by car, and we walked to the first floor. There were two Gestapo men. One of them knocked on the door and another Gestapo man was already in the apartment and he opened the door, and I saw through the narrow opening in the door that he was holding a revolver. They were both from the Gestapo and they opened the door and I was there only for a short time. One of the Gestapo men then stayed there and we went to the nearby police station with these SS men, and I was there for a while. I don’t remember whether they asked me something or not, and then they told me to go home. I still do not know why they did it that way.”

“The reason they transported us away from the camp was that the front was already approaching. One day a bomb fell in the vicinity of our camp, and the blast was so strong and it scared me so much that my bed was shaking as I was trembling with fear. So that was it. But we slept well there. They had straw-filled mattresses, and we slept perfectly there.”

“They suggested that since I was going to the carpenter Mr. František Josef, whose son had the same name, I might ask him to make a ‘vozembouch’ for me. (simple Czech folk music instrument – transl.’s note) Franta said: ‘It’s easy, you just take a wooden stick and you attach a little chip from a gherkins tin, here in the lower position, and you use two pot lids for cymbals.’”