František Teplý

“On Monday, 7th May, 1945, we were working as usually and around 11:00 a.m. my dad shouted at me: ‘bring the camera, bring the camera’! The Navrátil and the Svěrák families were returning from their hideouts. They were communists and somebody warned them that an SS commando group was on the way to Roveň and that it was about to burn down the village and massacre the inhabitants. The communists of Roveň passed the message among them and kept it for themselves. They hid in their makeshift hideouts and effectively left the other inhabitants to be massacred. My mother went to tell the news about their return to our neighbor, Horáková, who stood by the door when Chvojka – who was a tailor and the chief communist in the village – was passing by her house pushing a bicycle that was loaded with the bags they had with them in the hideout. She asked him: ‘So Chvojka, were you hiding as well’? He didn’t say anything in response and just hurriedly walked on. Four years later the communists took their estate and moved them to the borderlands. This Chvojka was the chairman of the local committee and this is how he took his revenge on them.”

“We drove to the Příbram train station. It was already at a time when they were releasing people from jail. They took us to the station and in ten minutes, the train arrived. We boarded it and went away. I got on the train at about two o’ clock that night. My train went to Prague. But I couldn't believe it. I thought ... as did the Germans when they transported people to the concentration camps ... they might as well take us to Siberia. So I immediately got out of the train and ran away. I was hiding in the bushes all night long and in the morning, trains were arriving and departing, cars were bringing prisoners, there were no dogs ... nothing like that. So when dawn came, I crossed the tracks and ran into town. I went to Svatá Hora to thank Virgin Mary for my survival. There I attended the first mass and then I returned back to the city. I saw some school children and they seemed unbelievable to me – such little people. I hadn’t seen such small people for almost six years.”

“I once used to know a pretty nice teacher and we told ourselves that we’d marry. About two hours later I was picked up by the secret police and I’ve never seen this girl again, neither have I ever again heard of her.”

“Then in the eighties, for whatever reason they had mercy with me and allowed me to study. I passed the appropriate exams and obtained a PuDr degree. From this point on I was able to get jobs that were adequate for that degree. If you do not remember exactly what a PuDr means – it basically means a railway worker (“Posunovač U DRahy”). I worked as a railway worker until my retirement.”

“At that time, in the great frost, someone had the idea to throw down into the mines (where waste was brought in) a 2.5 m long tree trunk. But it fell about ten footsteps away from the path where we were emptying the ashes. If you left that path, the guards could shoot you without a warning. We talked about it all the time - we called it a ‘stick’. So after about a week it was up to me to carry out the ashes. I really wanted to see it. So I got lined up as the last one and when I turned around I saw that beam. At that moment I realized the absurdity of my position. We were freezing even though we had fire wood right under our nose. It was very inhumane in my opinion. So I put down the bucket and went to grab that stick. One step, two steps, three steps... my heart was running high ... as if it wanted to jump out of my mouth ... so I gritted my teeth and walked on. The fourth step, fifth step, sixth step ... at that moment it got very quiet there and all the men looked at me incredulously. But all I thought about at that very moment was just the stick in front of me and the frantic beating of my heart. The seventh step, eighth step, ninth step ... when I stopped at the stick I was very dizzy. So I slowly lifted up the log and put it on my shoulders, then I slowly turned around and walked back with it. At that point, the guards could no longer shoot me. They could have shot me in the back as that would have been classified as a killing during a break-out attempt. But to shoot an inmate from the front – that would be much harder for them to argue the case. At that moment I knew that my soul had remained free, that nobody could ever take away my inner freedom again.”