In a village Krosno near Dukla we got dressed in military uniforms. Then we had been waiting in bunkers. For eight days we got no meals. German snipers controlled the area completely. It was impossible to deliver food to our position

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Michal Bindzar was born on the 16th of October in 1922 in Ruske, Carpathian Ruthenia, where his family owned a farm. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia, Hungarians occupied a part of Carpathian Ruthenia. Because of this, Bindzar had to enlist in the Hungarian army in October of 1942. In April 1943, he was transferred to a Russian frontline near Kiev. Bindzar defected to the Russian side. Instead of fighting against Germans, Bindzar was sent to a prisoner camp in Eastern Ukraine. In the camp he was detained until September 1944, when he enlisted in the foreign Czechoslovkian army of Gen. Svoboda. He experienced his first battle in Dukla pass. Later, he suffered a leg injury. After he returned from the hospital, he served as a military messenger at a company headquarters. He reached Prague with the army via Liptovský Mikuláš - Ostrava - Kolín. After the war he had served a regular military service on the border near Nitra. Then he moved to Bohemia with his father. After he graduated at a Forester High School in Tábor he found a job in Military Woods in Lazne Kynžvart. Bindzar refused to become a member of The Communist Party so he was fired a few years later. Then he found a job of as a co-driver in State Woods in Plana. He later became a gamekeeper there. Today he is in retirement. He lives in Mariánské Lázně.