Metoděj Osladil

"They rushed us there almost at a run. Everyone still had something with them, because when we were in Šumperk, some people were given food for the road. So they lost that. They rushed us under this arcade in the fourth courtyard. Some of the boys dropped to the ground there, and they were beaten. So we were in the fourth courtyard. There were two cells on the right side and two cells on the left. So they divided us up there."

"Those were these kind of wooden racks, and we slept on them bare. Just like that. The only thing we could was put a coat or a hat under our head. That was it. We slept on those planks. And when one person turned over, everyone had to. That's how crowded it was. I mean, there were eighty of us in the room."

"I saw how two Jews had to beat each other. They beat each other with sticks next to a puddle, until they were all beaten up. The one fell down. He drowned there. I don't know what they did to the other one though. I left, rather than be a witness to that, to have not done a thing. There were others like that. Even I experienced how when we were weaving baskets, we smoked potatoes in the chimney. We always took some from the pigs. So we were smoking them for ourselves. We always took out our blankets when we were smoking something, because they were full of fleas and rubbish. So that they would jump off and to get them clean, we took them outside. So I wrapped a couple of the potatoes into the blanket. I put it under my arm, and then we had to return to our cell. And when we were entering the cell, the SS man had an idea. Did he see that I had something there? So he pulled me back out again. He pulled me into the cell and there they beat me up. And then our own Commandant Lojza came for me, and he was even laughing at me, saying: 'You see, if you're doing something, make sure you don't get caught."

"They loaded us up, herded us into a train, a normal one, not a cargo train. We sat down and off we went. We stopped in Lysá nad Labem, and people gave us food and drink through the windows. Then the Germans had them disperse. And we carried on to Terezín."

"When they locked me up, they so beat my backside that I couldn't sit for a whole week. With a bullwhip. And they even made fun of it at the police station in Ruda [Ruda nad Moravou - ed.]. When you got over it, it was just about okay. Worse was when they locked me up and took me to Šumperk. There was a man there from Hartíkov, and he had been beaten so badly that the meat was falling off his backside. At the Šumperk Gestapo."