Josef Maňák

“He was under the surveillance of the Secret Police, we all were. Dad didn't believe it. We lived in a street which crossed Široká Street, and I told Dad: ´Look, there is a car over there in Široká, two guys with berets on their heads sitting inside. They are from the StB and they are watching us.´ They could see our house comfortably from there. Or there would be a car standing on the tram tracks right next to the adjacent house. One day I said to Dad: ´The StB men are here. Right in that car over there.´ Dad walked over to those two men and told them: ´If you are waiting for my son, he has left for Trhové Sviny to see the daughter who is married there, and he will be back today around six.´ They never watched us from that spot anymore.”

“At the beginning we suffered from hunger terribly. Only on Christmas we were then allowed to receive some package sent from home. But at the beginning the hunger was terrible. We were thus stealing. There was a field where beans were grown, and we were stealing them and cooking them, so that we could have at least something to eat.”

“One day he flew a reconnaissance flight alone, because there was fog and they couldn’t fly as they normally would. As he was coming back from the recon mission over Germany, a shrapnel from a grenade hit his oil tank when he was over the Dutch island Walcheren. He tried to make it to England, but his plane fell into the sea about six miles from the coast. He had saved himself in the dinghy, but since the wind was blowing in the opposite direction, it carried him back to the Dutch shore and the Germans captured him there. But he tore off his Czechoslovak insignia from his uniform and pretended to be a Canadian. Thanks to this he got to the Canadian POW camp.”

“We escaped from Prague with my future brother-in-law. We didn't stay in a student dorm, but in a private apartment, and we thus ran away immediately and hid in the attic of a mill in Litvínovice. We were hiding up there in one of the buildings and girls were bringing us food there. When things then got quieter, we came out. Therefore we didn't get imprisoned like the other students.”