Prof. ThDr., Th.D. Karel Skalický

“Hopeful and cheerful because we have reached the border – we only had to wade the Malše River to get to Austria – we found a spot where it was possible to get into the river, and we undressed and I jumped into the water. But it had been raining for the past two weeks, and there was quite a lot of water in Malše. I was standing in the river and the water was reaching up to my chin. I held my stuff above my head and I wanted to cross the river, but my feet slipped. Luckily I grabbed some branch so that I did not lose balance and I crossed the river holding onto that branch. I left my clothing there and I went back for Pavel’s clothes, took them over and then I came back for Pavel to help him cross the river. But there were so many nettles that when I jumped into the river, I actually slid down on my ass through the nettles, and I got into the water. My ass was burning for a long time after because of those nettles.”

“We walked into the forest but it was so dark that we actually did not see where we were stepping or where we were heading, and so we walked with our hands in front of us in order to protect our eyes from branches. We were able to follow the path only because we saw a strip of light above, and this helped us to keep the approximate direction. We walked very slowly and it was quite… difficult on my nerves, I would say. Well, after about an hour of walking slowly like this… through the darkness, suddenly light began to show in front of us, and Pavel says: ´See, the forest ends here, we will soon reach the wires.´ So we walked out of the forest and we kept walking on and on and on, for about fifteen or twenty minutes, or perhaps even less… and then I suddenly saw a line of black poles in front of us. As soon as Pavel saw it, he told me: ´See, we have reached the wire line, and so now we need to go back.´”

“We began walking uphill toward state road which led to Linz. We stopped when we reached the road. There was a beautiful vista of Czechoslovakia – in hindsight. And so we stood there and watched our homeland. I was overcome by homesickness in that place because I was leaving my homeland. But I said to myself: ´No, I am not leaving my homeland, I am leaving in order to return.´ I kept repeating this to myself while we were on the train from Prague to Budějovice. I repeated that I was leaving in order to come back, and I was saying this while we were on the train from Budějovice to Horní Dvořiště, and I was saying the same thing to myself when I was standing on that road and looking homewards. As we were looking back, all of a sudden we saw a signal flare, and then another one was fired, and all the searchlights got turned on, and they raised the alarm precisely two hours after we had cut through the wires. We said to each other: ´Hey look, they raised the alarm in Czechoslovakia.´”

“On the left hand side, not far away, there was an observation tower. As soon as we got back into the forest, an illumination flare was suddenly fired from that tower. Since we were already in the forest, they were not able to see us. Pavel said: ´Now we need to wait until the guards pass.´ We had some bread rolls with us and the Praděd brandy. We ate the rolls and drank a bit of Praděd, and about half an hour later we saw some light approaching us. Fortunately it was still raining, it was raining a lot. If the guard had had a dog, it could have smelled us, but they either did not have one or it could not smell us. The guard thus passed by. We saw them, because they had a torch. When they passed, we waited for ten or fifteen minutes and then we went for it.”

“As soon as we arrived to Westbahnhof, I sent a telegram to my friend, who was the only person who knew what I wanted to do. I had agreed with him that he would then bring the telegram to my parents and tell them what I had done. So I sent him the telegram – we had agreed on the text: ´It’s a boy!´ Then we walked from one monastic house to another and we asked them to receive us.”

“A year later we met again, again on Easter, in one café or actually it was a pub in front of the railway station and as we were drinking beer, he suddenly says to me: ´Well, Karel, when you come back here for holiday and you don’t find me, do not wonder, because I am going away.´ I asked him: ´Oh, so you got transferred somewhere else?´ He says: ´No, it’s no transfer. I am leaving by myself.´ I obviously asked him: ´Where to?´ He replies: ´Over the border.´ I was surprised: ´Don’t be a fool, you really want to cross the border and cut the wires?´ ´Yeah, I got it all figured out, I know the way well and I will make it this time.´ Well, to put it short, when he told me that he wanted to leave and that he had the courage, I was taken by surprise. He suddenly asks me: ´Wouldn’t you like to go with me?´ I was shocked, and I began to withdraw. I started saying: ´Well, Pavel, you know, the thing is… I have to complete my studies yet and I do not like to leave things unfinished. If I had already graduated, I would certainly go right away, but now...´ As I was speaking, my other self as if started laughing inside me. It told me: ´Karel, you are now making excuses, you are scared now, but see, this is the moment, and if you miss it, you will only keep rotting.´”

“Pavel was cutting through the first barrier. He struggled with it, but he eventually managed to cut it and we moved to the second barrier. I could see the isolators and the wires attached to them. Pavel touched the electric wires with the pliers and there was no current in them. We thus simply cut the wires, and we moved to the third line, we cut through it, too, and behind this third barrier there was a strip of plowed land where we have left our footprints, and we thought that we had made it and that all we had to do was to run to the border line and just cross over it. But it was not so simple.”

“Then I learnt that Pavel Třebín was in Czechoslovakia. I asked about him at the seminar congregation and I learnt that the seminars congregation had prevented his ordination for priest. I therefore thought that since he saw that the ordination was impossible for him abroad, he did not hesitate to offer his services to the state police, go to the Czechoslovak embassy and return to Czechoslovakia and have himself ordained there. He was allegedly ordained by bishop Pobožný, a bishop from Slovakia. What recommendation he had when he ordained him, or what his conscience was like, I don’t know. The bishop thus apparently had to ordain him under pressure from the police. Pavel thus eventually really became a priest. When I later returned to Czechoslovakia for a couple of days, already as an Italian citizen, I learnt from one Czech priest that Třebín was an agent. I still believed that he had had clear conscience when he had been leaving the country, and that he had intended to become a priest abroad, and only after it was made impossible for him did he decide to collaborate with the police. But based on the documents which came to light after the revolution, it is clearly evident that he had already been sent there as an informer. Suddenly I could see my whole adventure from a different perspective. Suddenly I saw that I had been as if drawn into a game which I had not been aware of, because never in my life would I think that they would send somebody as a spy to Rome, to the Czechoslovak seminarian college. This was just completely out of everything I could imagine. I thus unknowingly served as a cover for something which I had absolutely no idea about.”