“In May (August 1944, auth.’s note) there was an air fight. The whole squadron of American bombers with fighter planes and Germans were shooting at them and they shot off the wing of one of the bombers. The airplane fell down on Vartovna and it cut some trees in the forest. But before the Germans reached the plane, people from Liptál and Polanka, Seninka and Jasenná had already stolen everything from the plane. Machine guns and everything, it was all gone. The Germans had nothing left to take. The guys were there immediately. There was no road at that time. Now you can even get there by car. It was not so at that time. We were observing it from Vsetín. It was terrible when we heard the airplane roar.”
“My first encounter with the partisans was in V Hrábí in the home of uncle Lašťovicový. I don’t know where he got that idea. He had told the partisans that he knew of a boy who would be of use to them. I came there and he introduced himself as Štěpán. ‘And do you know that there are partisans here?’ I replied: ‘I know, I have already seen some.’ I said that I would go to them. He said that no, but that I would instead serve as their messenger, because I was an inconspicuous lad. I would be bringing messages, medical supplies and warm clothing. These things were being carried from Vsetín. I didn’t know the guy at all. I would be bringing it to Štěpán in a rucksack. There was no way I could for instance take even a single pair of socks. They would always count it. Everything was written down. Štěpán would then hand it over to them. Only rarely I transmitted oral messages. On Saturdays I would always go home on my bike. I was bringing messages to the gamekeeper’s lodge in Obora in Liptál. There is a gamekeeper’s lodge and even today there is still a sign posted on it: This was the seat of the 1st partisan brigade staff. I only met major Murzin later at a meeting in Olomouc. I saw him in our place only once.”
“People in the pasturage settlements often experienced more horrors than on the front, because there were the partisans and then the Germans came there. This happened in our place, in V Háji in Liptál: in the evening there were three partisans with Murzin. They covered the windows so that nobody would see them. They liked lard with onions, and vodka, of course. Germans came the day after. I could speak a bit German. It was the first time that I saw a German soldier cry. There were three or four of them and they were asking about partisans. Nobody has ever seen them, obviously. One of them showed me a photograph and cried that he had not seen his child for three years. It was the first time that I saw a German cry. It has never happened again to me. The Germans were committing such atrocities. He was an older gentleman. And so they went away.”
“Germans went on a patrol and they wanted to go to Hrábí. They had received some info, and my mom ordered my sister to run over to the Maniš family. The partisans made it just in time: they jumped out of the barn and escaped to the meadow and away. Otherwise the village Hrabí would have been burnt to the ground. My sister has thus saved them there.”
Miroslav Škrabánek was born September 21, 1926 in the pasturage settlement V Hrábí which is located in forests between the villages Liptál and Hošťálková. When he was seven years old, his family moved to a newly built log cabin in the pasturage hamlet V Háji two kilometers away. Many of his relatives supported the partisans from the Jan Žižka brigade during the war, who found hiding places in the surrounding forests. Miroslav served as their liaison when he was eighteen years old. He was bringing medical supplies, food, clothing and messages to them. At that time he was apprenticing in a shoe-making factory in Vsetín, and he was thus also repairing shoes for the partisans. He continued working as a shoemaker after the liberation. In 1948 he did his compulsory military service and in 1951 he married Emilie Válová, and he moved to her house in Jakubčovice nad Odrou. He worked in the Optimit Odry company for the following thirty years. He still lives in Jakubčovice nad Odrou.
In front of the Škrabánek family house in the pasturage settlement V Háji. On the right the resistance fighter Karel Žalský with Miroslav's parents, sisters and brother.
In front of the Škrabánek family house in the pasturage settlement V Háji. On the right the resistance fighter Karel Žalský with Miroslav's parents, sisters and brother.
