Arnošt Rudolf

“We spent over two months on a ship cruising in the waters around Norway. We didn’t know what was gonna happen next. Nobody expected a war with Soviet Russia. We thought they planned an occupation of Spitsbergen. Instead, on 22 June, war with Russia broke out. They transported us on trucks to Petsamo in Finland. At this point we had been in the Fiord for about two months. In Petsamo there is a small peninsula, it’s called Liinahamari. It’s about 6 km long and 200 meters wide. On that peninsula we had to set up artillery batteries. We had to go searching for wood because the peninsula was a bare rock. So, on that peninsula we were setting up batteries. You had to first shoot two-meter deep holes in the rock, then the base of the cannon was embedded in the rock and it was cemented with concrete. These cannons were solid. I stayed in this place for three winters and two summers. We suffered severely there – our hair fell out, our teeth started to fall out and two suffered from arctic insanity so after three years they relocated us.”

“I got to Odessa. We were unloading cargo ships in the military harbor. Then we were building a factory. It was terrible there – no food, nothing to heat with, nothing. There was a lumber store near the train station and me and two Russians were stealing wood from that store in order to cook something for lunch. The lunch consisted of four pieces of turnip. I got really skinny in Odessa, weighting only about 30 kilos – I was skin and bones.”

“In this transport I got to Motol and I learned there that they were holding back Germans that opted for Czechoslovak citizenship but releasing Austrians. So I wrote a letter to my mother and she got a confirmation that I’m an Austrian citizen. My mother and my uncle came to Prague to pick me up and took me home to Břeclav where I stayed. I didn’t have any problems in Břeclav, I only had Czech friends there. The only difficulty was my Austrian citizenship. In 1947 I finally got the Czechoslovak citizenship.”

“My mother got sick in 1922. I was three months old at that time. The year 1921 was cruel, my father lost his job and so he asked the mother of my mother if she could take care of me. My mother was the youngest of 16 siblings. When my mother’s sister learned that I’d be cared for by my grandmother, she decided that I could stay with her as she couldn’t have children. I called my uncle, who worked for the railways, father. He got on a train to Vienna, wrapped me up in a fur coat and took me to Břeclav. So I was an Austrian citizen but I grew up in Břeclav.”

“I had money because when I deserted from the ship I took with me a leather sailorman’s suit. I took some more things, a radio set for example. I sold this radio in Varna and got quite a lot of money for it. For an army belt I got a goose, for example. I was living in Plovdiv. Once I went to the cinema and the guard that was searching for Bulgarian deserters wanted to check my documents. As I didn’t have any they arrested me and kept me for about a month in a prison in Plovdiv. Then I was transferred to a large prison in Pleven. In the prison cell there were three of us. A murdered who killed a customs officer and an old man who illegally killed a pig. It was a very benevolent prison – in the morning they would let us out in the prison garden where we could exercise and train. As we had money we could send the guard to buy us some fruits or whatever we wanted. In this peaceful setting we lived until the Russians occupied all of Russia. They released the political prisoners but I stayed there.”

“There was a Russian doctor at the conscription. He checked me and told me that I’m sick. I caught typhus in the camp. I spent the rest of the war lying in a bed with typhus. There were four of us sick with typhus, three of us died. And one Hungarian who wasn’t a soldier, died as well. The Russian soldier had a group of prisoners to guard but one of them ran away so in order to have the numbers match he had to take one boy in Budapest and put him in our group. There also was a lung doctor from the Tatra Mountains, Slovakia, but I don’t remember his name anymore. I was bed ridden and couldn’t gain any weight. The doctor was wondering what to do with me. Although I was fed well I wasn’t gaining any weight. Then the doctor got the idea that saved me. From one of the prisoners I got a blood transfusion which helped me to get back on my feet.”

“In 1940 I was summoned to the recruitment office in Břeclav. It was a mistake. They asked who spoke German. I graduated from a German school so I couldn’t say that I don’t speak German. So I stayed and thought that I would get a chance later to explain to them that I’m not a German. But nobody asked later on. So I ended up in the navy artillery. I still hoped that I’d somehow get back home because I didn’t want to go to war. But they had one rule: If your father is German, you’re German as well. I was trapped and didn’t get out of it anymore. As I was a graduate they wanted me to go to an officers’ school. But I refused and therefore they didn’t let me go on vacation – I wasn’t able to go home for two years.”

“I was taken to Izmail on a ship. There was a huge German prison camp. There were mostly Germans, Hungarians and some Spaniards who fought for Hitler at the Russian front. Apart from a few tents and wooden shacks there was nothing there and we had to sleep outside on the ground. There was a severe lack of water. We were constantly thirsty but the food there was decent. There was a lot of Czechs. One of them was a waiter in Vienna. Another one was some Benda from the foothills of the Krkonoše Mountains. He was from a mixed Czech-German marriage. We spent most of the time waiting for water in a queue. Then two Russian soldiers took us to Moscow but not as prisoners anymore but as free men. We could move freely around the train.”

“A soldier came running and shouted that the war was over. By that time I was on the room. But it wasn’t over for us. I sensed that the damage done to Russia was going to be removed by the prisoners of war. I was taken to a Sovkhoz to the Ryazan Oblast. Then we were taken on a ship across some river, I think it was either the Oka or the Volga river. We drove some further 80 kilometers to the east and then we arrived in the camp. There were many inmates in the camp, a whole train full of people. There followed a selection and I landed in the Sovkhoz. There were tree gardens and the Russians used to go there and steal. So we were established as guards but we would still let them in. One of us had a deal with them and they were stealing firewood from the gardens. We had some lumbermen in our group so we took several wagons dragged by horses and went to the forest to fall trees. I was serving as a sort of an interpreter and they were falling trees. We spent a whole week there in the forest. On the Sundays we came back to the Sovkhoz.”

“Every time there was a warning of possible minefields the ships sailing in the convoy were roped together and crossed the field like this. The ropes were releasing the mines from the anchors and sending them to the surface. Surfaced mines were usually shot at with these huge four-barreled machine guns. On that mine sweeper I was in charge of one of these machine guns. We shot at the mines until they blew off. After my service on the mine sweeper, the war was coming to its end quickly. The mouth of the Danube isn’t one huge stream. It’s rather a wide delta with many small streams. These soldiers got stuck in the Danube delta, they got caught there. So we had to rescue them. We were shipping them out of there on small barges. We were taking them to Constanta. The sky was full of various airplanes. Suddenly they started dropping bombs at us. When this hell broke out, we didn’t wait a second and simply ran away.”

“I got sick already in Odessa. I had a leg fracture and my leg was terribly swollen. I was placed among the wounded. The Red Cross later organized that people were released regardless of their nationality. So we were prematurely released from the army to go home. From the hospital I got to a repatriation camp in Marmaros Szigetu in Romania. They were assorting people: Hungarians to Hungary, Austrians and Germans to Germany, Italians to Italy. There were a lot of men from the Slovak army as well. Together with these Slovaks I drove to Košice. Then we continued to Prague. On the way to Prague we got beaten up in Olomouc. That was the first time I got beaten up in the war. One of us wanted to go to the toilet in Olomouc on the train station. When he opened the door a pack of fanatic people broke into the carriage and beat us up really bad. Then we continued to Motol in Prague.”

“We were about 180 on that island. There was an anti-aircraft battery and us. We had a 15cm caliber and they had a 7cm caliber. When we arrived on the island there were a few Finnish soldiers and two women. They left after a few months. There were no major disputes among the men from the unit. They knew that I was writing letters home in Czech but they accepted it as a fact. No one was angry with me for adhering to my Czech nationality and writing Czech letters. There were a few disputes with those from the foothills. They were mostly Communists. There were a few functionaries that were hiding there and they had political disputes with the foothills guys. But it wasn’t anything serious, just some disputes.”