Eduard Novák

* 1922

  • "We would tell each other: you will be at that place at this or that time. We would take a big cart and some six, eight or ten of us would drag the cart through the forests to Římov or to Babice. Here, they dropped the material over a local graveyard and we went there to pick it up. Stuff was also dropped near Šašovice and each of us was entrusted with a special task. Some of us were signaling with flashlights so that the planes flying over could successfully drop several bags with parachutes. One of them is still buried in the ground there. Maybe they will search for it."

  • "At the end of April the paratroopers came to me and asked me to take them to the cinema. I was working in the cinema as a cashier, and so I got them in. There was this German and an entire battalion of the NSDAP, who were there all days and nights. He was a high-ranking German. I let them in and they were sitting right behind this German, and everything was fine. The guys saw the film... But that was already the end of April, anyway."

  • "Some of it was taken away, and a lot was stolen. A German soldier was guarding the depot. He was a bricklayer from Berlin. He kept asking us whether we had schnapps, and I was telling him that we didn't have any. Eventually I told the guys to get some schnapps, which I would then give to this Fritz and take the cans away. They found some schnapps in the villages where people were distilling it, and I gave it to him. He drank it, threw his firearm onto the stairs just like this, and he sat down on the stairs, drunk as a skunk. We were taking out the cans meanwhile. The air was clear, as we say."

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    V Želetavě, u Pamětníka, 28.11.2009

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We kept the weapons in our smokehouse and in the rabbit-hutch

Eduard Novák was born July 19, 1922 in Želetava. He was the only child of a butcher by trade and former legionnaire from Russia. His father met Eduard‘s mother while he was training to become a butcher. During the First World War, the father worked as a postman and the mother was a housewife. Eduard Novák studied at the trade academy in Znojmo, but after the occupation of the borderlands he had to relocate and start attending school in Moravské Budějovice. Both father and son joined the resistance movement right after the outbreak of WWII. His father was active as a liaison and messenger between the higher command and the regional resistance groups. At first, Eduard was helping with removing supplies from the Czechoslovak army depots which were taken over by the Germans. Later he assisted during paradropping of weapons. Some of the weapons were even hidden in the Novák family‘s rabbit- hutch or in the smokehouse but fortunately there were not found by the Gestapo during house searches. Since 1944 he was helping paratroopers, as thanks to his job in a dairy he was able to provide them with milk, butter and eggs. At the very end of the war he and his comrades took over a distillery. After the war he worked for the communications administration in Jihlava, and after the cancellation of his job position he began working in Brno and then in Třebíč, where he spent the longest time. He retired earlier owing to his recognized statute as a person who had helped the paratroopers. He still lives in his native house in Želetava and in 2007 he received the official statute of a war veteran.