Ing. Luděk Šácha

"Guns appeared among the young people. Getting a gun among the boys was not a problem. I also saw an article in the newspaper that it was more than a thousand boys who lost their eyesight playing with guns and grenades in the Czechoslovakia after the revolution. They shouldn't have picked that up at all. I, for a boys service in return, got a revolver that could hold rifle cartridges. Not all of it, but when I took the bullet out of the cartridge and cut the case with a hacksaw, I put it back in and put a wadded bullet I had cast from lead on top. That was it... Even though I never fired it, I put sealing wax on it and that's what I shot with. So with that gun I went to Germany, to the world. Exopecting that there would be SS men somewhere, well, I would have made a real mess of it."

"We were directed against the Germans. We had a great experience, there was an airport. In 1945, in early April, the Americans flew there twice and shot up their planes on the ground. And they said they were loaded because several people were working there as staff. When we started school in May, we looked at it. I saw the fuselage of the plane shot up, it was a Stuka plane. It was like a saw cut, holes, the cargo must have exploded. We watched the attack and I counted the columns of fire. I counted nineteen."

“There’s one more interesting story I can tell you. Our warders in the Pankrác prison took us twice on an excursion to the so-called ‘sekyrárna’ or ‘axe room’. Our cell was next to this axe room as they set up a special juvenile compartment for us in the death cells bordering with the axe room. We were on a shared cell, the other cells were smaller accommodating up to four people. I saw the inscription ‘executed’ with the date scribbled to it. It was written on the doorjamb. Another writing I found there said: ‘I had to die because I was in love with a Communist’. I read this inscription over and over again.”

“It started like this: once when we were coming back from a commando, I saw an interesting girl from the truck. Later, I saw her again at one of our public performances with our band. She was there and I was eying at her. I asked her up for a dance and that’s how we met. Back then, I could barely dance – we only learned to dance later with my wife when we attended adult dancing courses led by a friend of mine who was a researcher. After we met at that concert, I would send her letters. I don’t even know who was delivering them, probably the boys from the stall or some of the warders. Once, it was my names day, I got a package from her with a cake. Her name was Zdena Jiskrová.”

“I was sentenced to fourteen months, so Beránek was almost right. When I spent almost twenty months in Zámrsk, the appellate review court changed the verdict to 18 months. Well, I served two months longer than I had to but nobody cared about things like that back then. The trial was on 22 – 23 June, 1949, in the Pankrác court building. I’ve got the indictment here. Ivan Mikuláštík was there, Zdeněk Duchoslav, Jaroslav Hnyk, Petr Glomb, Pavel Glomb, Jirka Velíšek, Láďa Zvelebil and Šrachta. They let them and Šrachta go home. So I was originally sentenced to fourteen months but the appellate court changed it to eighteen months. It didn’t affect me that much as I was pretty resistant to these things. I felt sorry for Pavel, however, as he was sentenced to four years and it struck him pretty hard.”

“I did my military service in the auxiliary technical battalions. We were soon transferred to Slovakia and I have a funny story that goes with it. Our journey started at the Masaryk train station in Prague. There were about 1200 of us and nobody had any idea where we were going. We drove all night and ended up in Komárno. We walked in through three huge entrance gates and were welcomed by battalion leader, Captain Hajno, who gave us the first pieces of information. Then a certain lieutenant-colonel – that was a high-ranking officer in our eyes – gave a speech telling us that if we did our job well, we could ‘return to normal society’. Then Captain Hajno finished it off by saying: ‘as it’s very hot here, your hair will be shaved completely’. This sent a murmur through the crowd. There was a guy with a machine gun on guard who shouted at us: ‘Comrades, comrades, don’t protest, comrade captain was in the USSR and has plenty of experience.”

“In 1947 I was an adventurous young boy and I ran away to Germany where I was caught by the French occupation authorities and sent to a Jugenheim for two months. The Jugendheim was actually a home for youngsters. The director of the Jugendheim told me to stay in Germany, that I would have it better there. He said: ‘Stalin is going to be in Czechoslovakia within two years’. I wouldn’t believe him. I came back home in October 1947 and soon afterwards, in February 1948, the Communists staged their coup.”