Jaromír Nickl

“The Second World War came and we had quite problems, since we lived near the station. When partisans passed through, there was a terrible shooting and rattle everywhere. Fortunately, we survived it all. I can say that they’d considered us to be the Spiš Germans, although my dad was Moravian and my mom, she had always been a housewife. During the existence of Czechoslovakia, various languages used to be spoken in different households – Slovak, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, as well as German. No one cursed anyone; people lived and got along with each other. Only after the war came, it became bad.”

“When I was an adult, I had to be drafted. Back then we didn’t know, or better, we didn’t even have a clue of what the PTP could have been like. They took us to Libavá, where we had the training and then they transported us in pig cars to Most. During the whole time I was a soldier, I held a pickaxe and a shovel in my hands. Those were our weapons. We were building houses, roads, everything what was needed. We had to accomplish the plan and who didn’t, wasn’t even allowed to go for a walk. From the very beginning it was very hard for me, because I was a barber. And I had to spend in military service 31 or 32 months.”