“I worked in the Catholic Youth Association, I worked there for quite a long time. I also spent a week in Želiv, it was called spiritual exercises. The reason I was there was because I was quite Catholic-oriented, my parents were Catholics as well. When I became a Boy Scout, I tried to stay in the forefront [of things] as well. That’s how I came to be at a meeting of the Catholic Youth Association with Toufar. There was a book about Toufar, and my photograph is in it. [In the photo] It’s just me, and he’s standing next to me.”
“I also saw American or English bomber planes bombing the railroad. They didn’t want the German [Italian - ed.] army to go back. Because Mussolini told Hitler he wouldn’t go to war with him. The Italian army was returning from the Alps, they sent them back. There was a two-track railroad that went in the direction of Wiener Neustadt and Graz, anyhow, down into Italy. When they destroyed the railroad, the Italians couldn’t take that route back to Italy, and so they went back via Hungary, as I found out later on.”
“There were two or three rooms, with about fifteen of us to each room. Two-level bunk beds, one on top of the other. They cooked in the labour camp. There were several houses there, so they cooked in them, in the kitchens. They had black coffee, and sometimes we got beets. Dumplings were a rarity, so were potatoes. Mostly, we had beets and some kind of pasta.”
Josef Rajdl was born on 13 December 1922 in the village of Ostrov near Ledeč nad Sázavou. His parents tended a farm, and Josef became a farmer as well. He went to school in Ledeč nad Sázavou, and he was a member of the Catholic Youth Association - Green Isle (Zelený Ostrov). He knew the priest Josef Toufar (a well-known victim of Communist repression, considered a martyr and in the process of beatification - trans.). In 1942 he was assigned to forced labour in Enzesfeld, Austria, where he experienced the explosion of an ammunition factory. After one holiday at home he decided not to return to Austria, and he hid with relatives in Rýzmburk. In 1946 he commenced his compulsory military service in Čáslav. In 1947 he was elected chairman of the United Agricultural Cooperative in Ostrov, and he directly participated in the collectivisation of the 1950s. In 1952 he married Marie Hermannová; they had three sons. Since he refused to join the Communist Party and did not wish to study a political school, he had to quit his job as chairman of the cooperative. He became a machine operator and later a tractor driver. Josef Rajdl now (2015) lives in a retirement home in Světlá nad Sázavou.
