We saw heaps of corpses as we were leaving the camp
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Josef Mikule was born August 13, 1923 in Lomnice nad Popelkou in former Czechoslovakia. He attended the elementary school in his native town for eight years, and in 1937 he went to Jítrava near Jablonné v Podještědí in order to learn German language there. He eventually had to leave the border region and he thus started a one-year vocational training in Libštát. When he completed the course, jh began working in the ironmonger’s Kučera in Lomnice nad Popelkou. However, in March 1943 he received a draft notice to do forced labour and he had to go to Miřetice near Klášterec nad Ohří, where he worked in the company SUMAG (Sudetendeutsche Maschinen und Gerätebau), which produced mainly aircraft parts. While working there, he joined the so-called Klášterec Band, a group of Czechs and seven ‘ostarbeiter’ (workers from Ukraine or Russia). They held meetings in the forest where they planned to attack the Werkschutz guards and disarm them, but on June 29, 1944 they were arrested by the Gestapo and transported to Karlovy Vary for interrogations. The Czechs were then transported to the concentration camps Flossenbürg and Mauthausen. The leader of the group Jiří Holeček eventually died in Mauthausen. Josef Mikule was transported to the Flossenbürg concentration camp on September 7, 1944, but already during a selection process on September 13 it was determined that he would be sent to the auxiliary camp in Zwickau. He arrived to this city in Saxony on September 29, 1944 and his work there consisted in repairing aircraft parts in the company Auto Union. He witnessed the air raid on nearby Dresden while he was there. On April 13, 1945 he was included in a death march, but he was released when they were near Weiden in der Oberphalz. He tried to get home, but he was arrested in nearby Stříbro by a member of Volkssturm and imprisoned for a brief time in this town. On April 26, 1945 he managed to return to Lomnice nad Popelkou, where he survived until the liberation of Czechoslovakia, although his health was severely affected. In October 1945 he was drafted to do military service, but due to his past internment in the concentration camp he only underwent basic training and then he was assigned to serve in the regiment’s communications centre. After his military service he worked in the ironmonger’s Kučera in Lomnice nad Popelkou, and later in the Technolen company in the same town. He eventually became the manager of the technical depot. He retired in 1982. Josef Mikule lives in Lomnice nad Popelkou.
