“My father was arrested by the Gestapo on December 9th 1939; not even a month later, on January 3rd 1940 he was beaten to death during interrogation. My mom was summoned to the Gestapo office in Brno on Mozart street, she came in and there was an urn standing on the table: ´Here is your husband,´ they told her. She did not know anything at all, she carried food with her for him, and she returned home crying terribly. We were never told how my father died, but it’s obvious that they had beaten him to death.”
“It was in summer, on August 27th, the whole camp had unified tents. The tents were triangular, army tents of simple construction. There were wooden poles, insulation in the back and front, to protect it from water leakage in rain. We brought a lot of straw there, so that we could sleep on soft surface. If you lied down in the tent, you still had about half a metre of space around you legs, thus you did not get them wet, except for a very strong rain and wind. The tent cloth was lower above your head, and you stuffed your things, your rucksack in this space. We were not given any uniforms, or at least I was not issued anything. I brought my own warm clothing, a sweater and several sets of underwear, but I lost it all while we were riding on top of a tank. The tank got a blast it caught fire and I was far away, there was no time to run in and save my rucksack. I lost all my things, I was then in the same clothing for about two months, that was not pleasant at ll. I was trying to get some new underwear, I managed to get some, the winter was about to begin, and I needed some coat. When I asked the others, they were telling me: ´Take some from the Germans.´ But those assaults were not easy. There were many assaults, the Germans even put up signs ´Achtung! Bandengefahr´ there, and they were careful, they were sitting on their tanks with their weapons ready.”
“After the front got broken through, I concluded a ´wonderful´ deal. The first bunkers were empty, nobody was there. A bit further I saw a Russian soldier, he was cutting a small loaf of Russian bread. I was terribly hungry, I was raving from hunger. Tired to death, I tell him: ´Give me a bit of bread.´ He replied: ´I won’t, I already gave away some, and I need this for myself, I am awfully hungry, too.´ I tell him: ´Let’s make a deal.´ I had a German 7,65 mm gun , today it would have cost around 18 thousand. ´Give me that bread, I will give you this gun in exchange.´ He smiled and said. ´OK, take the bread then.´ This was the worst business I have ever made in my life.”
“Several of them (soldiers from the Slovak division of general Malár) remained, those who were scattered in the villages. There were not many of them, but their brought their tanks with them. We lost them quickly. Our first combat action was an attack on armoured train in Kysak – Obišovce, which was carrying about ten tanks. Then they sent s on a revenge party at us as a revenge for the killing of the officers from the express train. They surrounded us and were pushing us to the forests. The tanks could not ride through the forest, they remained on its border, and the Germans shot them to pieces. I also lost my stuff there. At that time I had my rifle, I received my machine-gun only later, and esteemed this rifle were highly, for it was the product of the Zbrojovka Brno factory. I was touching it, even petting it, I considered this rifle not only a weapon, but also a friend.”
“We were in Przemysl, we were returning to our barracks. We had great gear from the Englishmen, battledresses and coats from camel’s hair. Polish ladies were eager to get them, they wanted to buy them from us, those coats were warm and good-looking at the same time. But it was in winter, and we did not want to sell them. One evening my friend and I were returning from a pub to the barracks, and suddenly from one house, a Russian with a submachine gun stepped I front of us:´Davaj šiněl – give me the coat.´ I was stunned, I was not expecting it, but my friend did not hesitate, he grabbed the submachine gun from the Russian’s hands and smashed him on his head with it. I can still hear the tinkling sound the magazine made. The guy collapsed and remained lying there. We returned to the barracks with one extra non-registered submachine gun.”
Miloslav Petráček was born in Slovakia to Czech-Slovak parents. His father František Petráček, a Czechoslovak army soldier, met his mother during military duty. His mother came from an Evangelical family; her father was an Evangelical pastor. They spent time in various garrisons; in 1937 they lived in Brno, where the father served as a staff captain, as a commander of an accompanying weapons squadron in the artillery. His father was a member of the Obrana Národa (Defence of the Nation) organization; the Nazis arrested him and he died in January 1944 in a German prison. Based on these events, after his graduation from secondary school in 1944 Miloslav Petráček joined partisan units in the mountains in eastern Slovakia. In the partisan brigade Čapajev, he fought from August 1944 until November 1944. After the breakthrough of the front he suffered an injury to his leg; after his recovery he served as a machine-gunner on the Il-2 aircraft of the Czechoslovak Air force until the end of the war. After the war, he studied at the technical college in Brno and earned a degree in mechanical engineering. He worked in the Brno branch of the Chemoprojekt Company, in which he later became a director. He was involved in the construction of refinery plants of Slovnaft in Bratislava, in Kralupy and in other places. From 1960 to 1973 he worked on the construction of oil refinery plants in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria (Alexandria, Basra, and Homs). He was also involved in research and development in the field of fluid processes (when solid substances have properties of liquids); he was also an author of several patents in this field. After 1989, he founded a company which focused on development and sale of machines for processing dry materials on the basis of fluid processes. Presently his only son, Dr. Martin Petráček carries on with this business. Miloslav Petráček died on 11 February 2011.
