Ing. Jan Suchánek

"And then I got a scholarship to the bishop's secondary grammmar school, the Jesuit secondary grammar school in Bohosudovo near Teplice, now it's Krupka. It was a boarding grammar school - and I can say that I owe a large part of who I am to that school. Recently, the round anniversary of the K event was celebrated, when all male orders were liquidated. Imagine about a hundred boys from the 6th grade up. They wake you up at midnight. SNB (National Security Corps) in uniform, militia and civilian. They check you three times until the morning, always wake you up again and add up. That means from the bedroom to the dining room, in the dining room reading the list and back. At that time, I had a torn drawing in my pocket, because I got F, so I tore it up in anger. Two or three times a gentleman checked me, there were more of them, and they asked: 'What is this?' I was in the in the eighth grade, I was fourteen."

"During the war, the Germans wanted to take the caves for the war industry. The Kateřinská cave suited them the best, because there was no water there. But the first dome had fallen, there was a danger that it would continue to fall. In the second dome, where there were stalactites, it was planned. They wanted to dispose of it and build the production. I know that dad and other people modified the cave by filling in the passage into the stalactite cave. They rebuilt the passage through the Kateřinská cave and disposed of the maps and repainted them. So, through the war, only one dome was used, which was in danger of collapsing. The most interesting thing is that a German officer, administrator of Moravský kras, knew about this. I know that after the war he and his family were liquidated, killed, but not by the Germans. It was him who alerted my father to the production plan. Thanks to him, the cave was preserved. And thanks to him, at the end of the war, my father and other people hid a total of two villages in the abyss of Macocha from February 1945 until the end of the war. The Germans couldn't go there, it was enough to turn off the lights. It was the village of Vilémovice and one more."