“We had to wear yellow ribbons on our shoulders so that everybody could see we’re Jewish. We did the heaviest manual labor like constructing roads, removing the snow etc. Additionally, we were desperately hungry all the time. A lot of people from my forced-labor company died. The chief of our unit was a Slovak, a fellow countryman from Carpathian Ruthenia. He was actually directly from Čop, my native village. It was obvious that he disagreed with the treatment we received and that he didn’t like what he had to do. He sympathized with us. Eventually, it was this man who helped me escape. It was on January the 12th, when the huge Russian offensive in Hungary began. He told me that day that he could no longer watch how they mistreated us. On the run, he was carrying me on his back as I was too weak to walk. That’s how I got on the Russian side.”
“I want to tell you what fortune in combat is: Once I heard someone saying “Pan, idi suda!” nearby in the forest. That could neither have been our men, nor the Russians. A Czech would have said “kamaráde” and a Russian would have said “tovarišč”. So I immediately knew who this was. It was the “vlasovci” or Vlasov’s men who were fighting with the Germans against us. A few seconds after the order had come they opened fire. I pulled Zelikovič to the ground and we fired back at them. The exchange of fire lasted until we ran out of ammunition. Then I sent Zelikovič back to the unit and told him I’d come later. I was I was the commander so I had responsibility for him. I didn’t have anything to shoot yet, so a moment of quiet set in. Suddenly three persons jumped out of the forest and walked in my direction. Although they didn’t know exactly where I was, they knew where the fire came from. I knew what kind of death awaited me should I fall into their hands. I was considering whether, after all, it wouldn’t be better to jump up and let myself be killed on the run. Just as I was getting ready to jump up and attempt a getaway, my fingers came across a machine gun that was laying underneath me all of this time and that I had mistakenly believed to be a stone. As soon as they came close enough I jumped up and opened fire at them. All three of them fell to the ground. To this day I don’t know whether they were dead or wounded but I was able to escape. That was nothing but good luck!”
“The scouts discovered that there’s a lavatory of the German army not far away from us. Everyday between 100 – 120 German soldiers would go there to wash them. It was the perfect military target. In order to annihilate it by direct fire, you had to get within eyesight. I volunteered for this mission as I didn’t speak too much Czech and I wanted to prove that I’m capable. By that time I was a commander already so I took my men and under the cover of the darkness we approached this lavatory with 16 mortars. The mortars, shells and the support were carried separately, it was pretty heavy. Around 8’o clock the first Germans started to pour in. I waited for the lavatory to fill with 100 – 120 men and then I gave the order to attack. It’s hard to describe what followed, how we shot that lavatory to pieces. There were, of course, a lot of dead and wounded Germans. As soon as we fired all of our mortar shells I gave the order to withdraw. On the way back we got under German artillery fire. They were shelling us terrible 120 mm grenades. One in the unit was hit by a grenade splinter in the back. I told the others to get a doctor and stayed with the wounded man. The shell splinter in his back was emblazed so I poured water from a field flask over it to relieve his pain. For this deed I was decorated with a war cross.”
“We encountered Russian soldiers. We heard: “Halt, who’s there?” We put our hands up and they took us to the bunker to see the captain. To our great luck he probably was a Jew. In response to our claim that we were Jews on the run he said: “If you’re Jews then say the bread prayer. I’ll give you bread if you’re hungry but say the prayer first.” After I recited it to him he gave us a letter for the NKVD office in Voroněž, where we had to report.”
“In 1948 Communism started in the Republic. I’ve been pretty much everything in my life except for a Communist. I feared Communism because I saw what Communism means. They did the dirtiest things on the world and covered them by beautiful slogans. They “liberated” our Republic from everything that was good about it. From my point of view Klement Gottwald was a traitor. It was him who sold our dear Republic to the Soviets. If there is something besides women that I loved and still love in my life it’s the Czechoslovak Republic. It’s my home even though I’ve lived over fifty years in Israel now. Life in Israel was very hard for me in the beginning. By the end of 1948 some people from Israel came to Czechoslovakia. Their task was to organize a Czechoslovak military brigade which should go to Israel help them in their war against the Arabs. The Czechs were supposed to train the Israeli army. This was so because the Czechoslovak government at that time believed that Israel would become a socialist state.
My first commander František Bedřich called me and said: “Joseph, I like you” You were my best soldier even though you didn’t speak Czech. You’re not a Communist and you’ll never be. I’m afraid about you. You’re a Jew. Go to Israel.” It was him who persuaded me to join the brigade. I was among those who left for Israel in 1949. However, I experienced a huge disappointment here. I came and they promised me this and that. They said: “You’ll be an officer! You’ll get an apartment! They simply promised me everything possible. But it was all just an illusion and bluff. It was all just talk. I had to start from scratch, without any means. I was thinking about going back to Czechoslovakia but there the Communists already ruled.”
Josef Müller was born on October 18, 1920, in Čop, which is in Carpathian Ruthenia, as one of five sons. His father, a disabled war veteran from World War I in 1924 decided to move to Kaposvár in southern Hungary because of his job. He worked there as the chief waiter in a hotel. Although they spoke Hungarian at home and the young Joseph attended a Hungarian school, he‘d witnessed displays of Anti-semitism early on from his childhood. After his graduation from municipal school Joseph was the only one of the boys to study at a grammar school. His brothers had to help their parents sustain the family‘s livelihood. In 1939 he was drafted to a Jewish forced-labor corps of the Hungarian army in Mohács. From the very beginning the members of this unit faced humiliation and corporal punishment. At first the unit was used for heavy labor on the territory of Hungary. Their duties included repairing roads, digging ditches and laying railway tracks. In the spring of 1942 the unit was transferred to the eastern front at Don. While the unit was proceeding to the battle lines it stopped everywhere it was needed. Among their tasks was clearing mine fields, digging ditches, burying murdered civilians, etc. The exhausting work, malnourishment, frequent beating and outward murder resulted in 120 casualties (half of its strength!) in the unit by the end of 1942. Only 8 of its originally 240 members survived the war. Joseph was picked by a young Hungarian doctor whose name was Mor. Mor employed Joseph as assistant staff in the Ozerki field hospital. This probably saved Joseph‘s life. With the help of one of the guards Joseph managed to flee to the Russians. Joseph started to work as an ambulance attendant. In the hospital he heard the Czech language for the first time. A Czechoslovak brigade was being formed in Novochapjorsk which Joseph joined. He was attached to the mortar company under the command of František Bedřich. In the beginning he had tremendous difficulties with his Czech. He participated in the battles at Machnowce, Dukla and Liptovský Mikuláš, where he was wounded. The shock from his injury paralyzed him. He was taken to the Poprad hospital where he was treated for six weeks. After a short relationship he married a Jewish army woman there. In the end of the war he was in Brno. After the war he learned of the fate of his family. His two brothers Nándor and Paul saved themselves but both of his parents and the third brother were murdered in Auschwitz. After the war he was sent to Milovice for a nine-month course at the military academy. There he perfected his Czech and his knowledge of Czech history etc. He then continued his service in the Czechoslovak army - first as a mortar company leader in Česká Lípa and later in Rumburku as the deputy chief of the local garrison. In October 1948 Joseph left the Czechoslovak army to join the Jewish brigade whose task it was to help in the fight for the independence of Israel. During his first years in Israel Joseph had to make a living dragging sacks with cement on construction sites and by washing cars. The turn for the better came with the Sinai war in 1956 in which Joseph participated in the rank of a private. He served with an artillery platoon in the Jordan valley. As soon his subordinates found out that Joseph masters the calculation of ballistic trajectories they sent him to a commander‘s training after which he was given back his original rank. However, he refused an offer to work for the army eventually. In the present Joseph lives with his wife Rivka in Kiryat Haim near Haifa.
