“You were obliged to write a report where you gave account of the meeting and submit the report to a special division of the factory. This division was somewhere in between the fifth department of the Central Committee and the police. It was supposed to keep watch over pureness. The lads were making fun of it. For instance, they wrote: ‘On February 23, 1951, I was asked on Wenceslas Square by an English-speaking foreigner to show him to a toilet’. They were having a great laugh of it. But this was at the time when our first jet plane, the L-29, was being finished. They would later call it the Dolphin. The plane was basically finished at the time and all that was missing was the engine. It was agreed that an engine had to be supplied for that airplane in order to make the test flights. The test flights would allow for the elimination of mistakes and for a subsequent trouble-free production of our own engine, the 0 701. The testing engine of course had to be of similar parameters and weight as the later production engine and it goes without saying that the engine would be shipped into Czechoslovakia illegally. One designer from the group working on the production of the engine was chosen to find the right test engine abroad. He went to Vienna to meet a man who was said to be able to get hold of the engine. It was a Czech who had lived in England since 1947 and who later became one of those three people who influenced me. However, our dear Vladimír, who was sent to Vienna, got drunk at a bar and shot his mouth off. He didn’t realize that the StB agents were listening. He was under surveillance, of course. So he had to come back home and he was told to pack his things. He got fired because they didn’t need him to embarrass the Republic. So they were looking for a replacement. They approached a certain Zdeněk Koktán, who had only been there for a short time, and he told them: ‘you must be crazy. I have two kids!’ So they came to Pergl, who also had two kids but who was more of an adventurer.”
“A part of the all-European operation called ‘Railway day’, which was a French initiative, was the plan to derail a train on the railway line to Smíchov. The lads who worked as journeymen and apprentices in the local factory, were producing the keys and they were doing so almost publicly. It was only by fortunate coincidence that it had not been revealed. (Nobody was hurt or died in these acts of resistance?) Well, acts... It wasn’t that grand. It was more like little things. Because if there was one place really unsuited for subversive actions, it was Prague and its environs. Thus we would damage and wreck armed transports coming through Hostivice if they happened to be unguarded. Another group would down power supply lines to the airport. They had this special device for this purpose. It was a rope originally used for binding hay. There was a chain attached to one end of that rope measuring about two meters in length. With this chain, they brought down the lines which were hanging low in the summer, only a few meters above the ground. However, this didn’t prove to be particularly effective. I saw with my own eyes how the airport went dark, but the lights came on in just 5 minutes. Only after the war, we learned that the airport had its own backup power supply that went on-line right after the alarm had been sounded. But anyway, at least this helped to create an atmosphere of insecurity of the people who were around it. Well, and things like that…
One interesting thing. As we were all huge fans of technology, we went crazy when we found out that one of us kept a ČZ motorbike in his basement from the good old days. We all used it for practicing. The leader of this group – a big technology nerd – bought a Bradshaw motorbike, which had stood somewhere, forgotten for a long time. We nicknamed it ‘Bereitschaft’. It was the most unsuited vehicle for illegal activities as it was extremely noisy. Its exhaust pipe was producing sounds similar to those of gun fire. But it was so enormously bold to use it for this purpose that nobody actually believed it was a motorbike. To give you an idea of the scope… For instance, we damaged the ‘Soviet Paradise’ exhibition in Myslbek. That was a pavilion that no longer exists today – it has been torn down ages ago. There were other, smaller sabotage acts. For example, we developed an incendiary bomb. To build it, we used bearing blocks smuggled to us by workers of the Jinonice Motorlet (by then still Waltrovka). These blocks were basically electron casts, which – combined with the flammable compound – produced extreme heat. However, it would only glow, it didn’t really set anything on fire. If you put it on a wooden floor, it would burn a hole through it, but it wouldn’t set the surrounding wood planks on fire. Thus, you can’t really call it a success.”
“It was really sweet. This guy’s name was Ryba. He was an activist from Mr. Teuner, chieftain – they didn’t call him chieftain, they called him leader. They readied this test tube – a vial as the doctors call it. Basically a large test tube filled with tear gas. This was in the theater in Kladno. The vial had a cork to it just as they keep it in the labs and the lad had it strapped to his chest like this. All of a sudden, it goes ‘psss’ and we knew we had a problem. The lad was up in smoke. Fortunately, he was accompanied by another lad who was quick-witted and who snatched off his coat and sunk it into the firefighters’ tank that was right next to the theater. In this way he was able to put it out. Well, Mr. Ryba pulled his gun and Slávek Lorenc, the head of the educational institute (so-called ‘Kuratorium’) and a resistance fighter at the same time, offered him protection by the same scoundrels who had tried to smoke him out. We were thus supposed to engage in resistance activities and at the same time protect him. He thus calmed down, but the whole undertaking was called off, as people were talking about the incident. Well, people, it was young lads and gals. So this was one episode, which luckily ended well. That Ryba was indeed stupid. If he had insisted on an investigation of the incident, it would have ended tragically, as the local head of the Gestapo, Vízner, was one of the most seasoned and most brutal Gestapo men out there. He would have certainly made the lads talk. Well, fortunately, there was no investigation.”
“Vašek Fráňa came with the news that the chieftain of the DTJ wanted to get the Kuratorium to exercise. We knew we had to prevent this at all cost since it would amount to raising collaborators. Thus, the four of us each took charge of one troop. At home, I had a couple of issues of the Čigoligo Scout magazine, which was a magazine published by the Prague 2nd troop, led by Foglar. Furthermore, in the attic of the Workers’ house, I found a sort of a manual of the Spartacus Scouts. They were a kind of Communist Scouts. But the manual contained a couple of useful games, like scouting. So we got it running in the truest spirit of the Scout. I was in charge of the Bears and Karel Boček was the chief of the Hawks. Our salutation (growls) has survived until today – when I meet the lads, who are by now eighty or seventy-five years old, they still greet me with our bear salute. So we had a cover up for, let’s say, our nightly running around the village, as they were war games we played with the lads. When Vašek announced it for the first time, telling us it was an order from Prague, I said ‘no, I’m not doing this’. Karel Míšek, the second one, also said no. Vašek said: ‘shut up. You’ve come on board with this. So shut up and do what you’re told’.”
“I would also collect the money for the wages of the civil employees and probably also their bonuses. So I went to the military command, which resides on the upper Malostranské náměstí Square. On May 5, I was just at the military command and had with me a package with 7 million of Protectorate koruna, which at that point still was a lot of money. I was on my way home. Why did I go home? Because me and one of the resistance leaders wanted to go to Saniťák and will call on them to surrender. However, by the time we got there they were already in a firefight. I went on foot and on the way there, I met my math prof and together we walked to Hostivice, where we found four shot lads lying on the ground. Close by stood a pack of soldiers led by an officer with a wooden arm, who you could tell just by looking at him was a cut-throat thug. These were lads from Dušníky, which today is Rudná. They armed themselves and they went to Prague, as they knew that they couldn’t use Plzeňská road. So they took Karlovarka, getting to Prague in this direction. They run into another group of lads patrolling at the outskirts of Prague who warned them that it was a really bad idea. They told them: ‘don’t do it, this will end badly. There’s a guy up there and he won’t let you pass. You know what, give us the few rifles you have and we’ll ambush them from the rear and thus your way will be cleared’. ‘Haha, that’s what you want, right? Get your own rifles somewhere!’ These idiots drove up there – they filled the platform of a car that had been converted to a truck. They didn’t even touch their rifles. That guy mowed them down like rabbits. Well, I found out that Sláva Hrzal was already at the Saniťák and that Oberzahlmeister, the commander, said: ‘look, I can’t surrender. But I can assure you of one thing – I will not do anything before the whole situation clears up’. And he kept his word. Later, we would organize patrols and we were trained for assistant bomb disposal crew. We were dismantling aerial bombs. At first, we treated the bombs with utter care, by the end, we would use a hammer for their disposal. After the liberation, it once happened that an old bomb expert who had experience from the first Republic, was teaching a group of youngsters how to dismantle a bomb. The bomb blew killing 18 of them.”
Jiří Pergl was born on May 27, 1925, in Prague. In 1943, he joined an anti-Nazi resistance group established around the Czechoslovak Church in Smíchov. The illegal group of boys aged 15-20 that was led by Václav Fráňa and Karel Boček, joined the Prague organization of the Communist resistance group “Předvoj” (Avant-garde). Jiří Pergl engaged in helping guerillas, prisoners and illegal members to sabotage trains, armed transports or the Ruzyně airport. He officially joined the Communist party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) in 1945 and became a member of the people’s militia. After having completed machine engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague, he was employed as an engine designer at the aircraft company Motorlet in Jinonice in Prague (known as Walter Motors a.s. before its nationalization). In 1952, he was drafted for military service and stationed in Žatec and later in Slovakia in Levoča and Kežmark as an aircraft engineer. After his military service, he returned to Motorlet. Part of his job was the import and the smuggling of engines from abroad, which partially served to replace the unfinished domestic engines. During the Prague Spring, he got involved in the reform process and publicly disagreed with the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. In October 1970, he was sacked from Motorlet. The reason for this was that in his capacity of a member of the KSČ factory committee, he promoted certain resolutions and was involved in the organization of an appearance of the reform communists Oto Šik, Eduard Goldstücker, Milan Hübl and Josef Smrkovský in Motorlet. For the ensuing 10 years, he worked in various workers’ professions, most of the time as a painter. For the new job, he obtained an apprenticeship certificate. He retired in 1985. He performed the role of the chronicler of Hostivice. However, after a disagreement in 2000 that had to do with the content of the chronicle, he moved to Unhošť, where together with Naděžda Stejskalová, they organized a series of historical exhibitions for the Melichar’s Museum of National History and Geography. He is still active today as an amateur historian. Together with his life partner, they are running a blog. Mr. Pergl still has a keen interest in aviation modelling and is currently writing a novel about the Prague bishop, Jan IV. of Dražice.
