Václav Jeřábek

* 1923

  • “At night, all of a sudden, they started shelling us with their mortars. Our position must have been somehow compromised or reported – nobody will ever find out anymore what happened. But anyway, the Germans opened fire from Baťovany at our side, one mine after another, we didn’t know where to hide. My friend, with whom I was mostly together, got lost in the mêlée and I couldn’t find him. A lot of guys died there and I was naturally afraid about his fate. But when I came back to the headquarters I was told that he had been wounded and sent to the hospital. SO I said to myself that I’ll go and find him.”

  • “We took refuge in the mountains and were searching for guerrilla groups that we could join. But the guerrilla groups that were operating in the mountains were in deep trouble as well due to the fact that the Germans and Slovaks had occupied all of the surrounding territory and they were having a hard time finding food for themselves. First of all, people need to eat and they couldn’t even get into a village to buy something because the Germans and the guard units were everywhere. So we were wandering the mountains and our supplies were running out. We realized that we didn’t know what to do. We ran into one guerrilla unit and they said: ‘we have nothing’. We were in the woods and while we still had some food left to eat it was good. We also had a horse with us and we said to ourselves that should the situation get critical, we’d kill the horse and eat it. But it was getting too cold and so we descended and sought out the guerrilla group that was the nearest. We approached them and they told us that they couldn’t take us with them since they were many and didn’t have any food themselves. However, they said that if we gave them our horse, they would be happy since at least they could slaughter it and have some food. But they couldn’t take us on board.”

  • “So I too stayed in the village with my machine gun. I thought: ‘what am I supposed to do now?’ Once the tanks were just 50 or 80 meters away from us, I had no other chance but to hide in one of the cottages. A lady came and said: ‘please, hide in the courtyard somewhere because the Germans are searching the houses’. So, to be honest, I hid in the yard, where next to a huge building there was a toilet, and I hid there. It was during one day and this lady brought me civilian clothes. She told me to throw away my uniform to prevent them from recognizing me as a soldier’.

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 29.01.2013

    (audio)
    duration: 47:40
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

One mine after another, we didn’t know where to run

V.Jeřábek, 2013
V.Jeřábek, 2013

Václav Jeřábek was born on March 22, 1923, in Pacov near Tábor, but soon he moved with his mother and sisters to Kežmarok in Slovakia, where his mother came from. Everyone from the family then received Slovak citizenship. At the age of eighteen years, Václav enrolled in the Slovak Army and was assigned to the artillery. In 1944, together with seven of his friends, he participated in the Slovak National Uprising. While retreating from the Germans, they would at first hide in one of the villages and then in the woods, where they wanted to join the guerrillas but their plan didn’t work out. From October to November 1944, he was hiding in Dolní Lehota and with the help of his sisters who got false travel documents for him he was able to get back home to Kežmarok. There he went into hiding until January 1945, when he became active as a soldier and was sent to fight in Liptovský Mikuláš. He witnessed the end of the war in hospital due to his poor health condition. After the war, he moved to Prague. In the 1950s, one year after the completion of his education he began to work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a clerk and was posted first to the embassy in Vienna and later to the embassy in The Hague. Early on in the 1960s, he was dismissed from the ministry and worked in a company dealing with the export of footwear.