Ing. Karel Pyško

"In 1949, I don't want to be wrong, but it was either February 12 or 18, it was Friday, and in the afternoon the Communist Party conference was held in Karvina. The leader of our choir was asked to do a program with his choir the evening after the conference. I was a member and a soloist at the same time. The leader also worked at the Doubrava mine, at that time it was still Betina. He asked the shift foreman to free me from the night shift where I was working so I could perform. I was the only male soloist. Then there was a girl who sang soprano. At that time, I was working in the so-called preparation crew. There were twenty of us including the district manager. At night we prepared the mine so that they could mine again in the morning. The shift foreman freed me, but asked me to come to the morning shift on Saturday and replace the night shift. Then I was to come right after that with my colleagues for the night. Why am I talking about this? I was not there when the methane explosion happened at four in the morning on Saturday. In the mining team where I worked everyone died. They never got anyone out because it was burning for several days. So, thanks to singing and the Communist Party, I was the only one of our team to stay alive. I thank singing for saving my life. Then I sang all my life. I had a reason to sing."

“Since my oldest brother and I were born at the worst time of the economic crisis in the 1930s, it was very bad. My father didn't have a job, but not because he didn't want to work. My mom used to work for richer people. When she got a snack there, she did not eat it, but brought it to us so that we would have something to eat. But mom was a dab hand and always managed to cook something. There was flour, potatoes. We used to go to a farmer´s family and bring them potato skins for the animals. I remember how I used to carry “oškrabiny”, that's how the potato skins are called in the “po našemu” dialect and I called to the lady from afar: 'Mrs. Kotásková, I'm bringing you “oškrabiny”!' Then she gave us some potatoes, cabbage, eggs, milk. It wasn't much, just to survive because the situation was really very bad. That was before the Poles came. I don't remember there being too many problems with the Poles. But it never happened that we didn't have a shortage. Mom used to say that we have to eat everything she puts on our plates. It was worse under Germany. Mom learned to go to the forced slaughter for horse meat. The food wasn't always, we were lucky when we got the horse meat. Mom then made goulash stews out of it."

"As a student, it was very difficult for me to get used to the fact that we had a mixed society in the class, while many German children were part of the Hitler Youth. They had the right to declare an alarm in the middle of classes, for example. We entered the courtyard and marched to the nearby playground, where they did various exercises with us, such as crawling and other military exercises. I remember a very unpleasant experience. Once I couldn't go on because it was a big drill. I stopped and one member of the Hitler Youth ran to me, he started shouting at me and peed on my head. Such appeals were made every moment. And of course, they also marched through the city in their yellow uniforms with black scarves. They marched down the main avenue to the sound of drums. When one of the bystanders didn't raise his hand, one of the boys slapped him."

"Methane was everywhere. At that time, measuring devices were not yet so perfect. It was measured by a gasoline lamp. The gasoline lamp was the original miners' lamp. Back then, we already had electric lamps, but the district managers also had gasoline lamps and their task was to measure methane. Based on how the flame rose in the gasoline lamp, he estimated how much methane there was. It was not to exceed two and a half percent. If this happened, it was necessary to immediately leave the workplace and increase ventilation. But the district manager could be wrong, because the size of the flame was a matter of millimeters. I also, unfortunately, saw with my own eyes that the measurements didn't take place. We had a so-called dead-end hole from the underground corridor to the mezzanine floor. The district manager, for example, put a lamp in there and followed us into the mine. He therefore did not measure methane, or measured it only occasionally. I think there was too much methane when that explosion happened because the explosion was huge. And I pointed it out to our district manager more than once: 'Mr. district manager, why don't you measure methane?' Because I was smart from school. The answer was often harsh. I once got slapped for being too wise. That's how it was. And when the explosion happened, the fire was so big because the methane explosion ignited the coal dust, which is even worse than the methane. There was fire everywhere.”