“We believed that they wouldn't overcome our fortifications. We believed in them – we knew they were good. We wanted to fight the Germans, but the great powers betrayed us. They left us to ourselves. The moment when the withdrawal order came was terrible. We didn't want to abandon the place. But we had to. The sergeant came and told me: 'Joseph, there's nothing we can do about it. It's an order. They will annex it.”
“We were manufacturing diesel pump-engines to be shipped to Turkey in Leopoldov. We wrote a petition to the United Nations. It was written in English, French, Spanish and in several other languages. There were competent people who put it together and translated it. There were doctors and academics in the Leopoldov prison. We attached the petition to the engines before they were wrapped in plastic and put into boxes. In two months, Radio Free Europe was broadcasting what's going on in Leopoldov.”
“We were meeting a lot of the Czech inhabitants of the villages in the borderlands. They had just been informed about the planned German annexation that was about to take place the next day. The German soldiers were supposed to come the next day by noon already! Those who had horses or oxen could at least take away their belongings. But what about the others? At one farm in Česká Lípa, the people begged us to help them to load up their pig. They didn't want to leave it behind to the Germans. They also had numerous rabbits. They distributed them to us. We then had them for dinner Nymburk. A lot of the farmers had to leave everything behind.”
“Horáček, a butcher from our town, had been a keen fascist long before the war. One day, when I was a small boy, I walked to school and met Pepík Oslář, a carpenter from Bernartice. He asked me where I was going and I told him I was on my way to the butcher's to get two sausages for luncheon. He told me to say: 'Long live Gajda', upon entering the butcher's shop. He said that I would get the sausages for free. So I proclaimed 'Long live Gajda' as soon as I entered the butcher's shop. Horáček turned around and looked at me. He said: 'Whose boy are you son?' I said: 'The Rývas, from Bernartice'. He was holding the knife like this and said: 'Gajda, Gajda, Gajda, Gajda…' and cut a huge chunk of ham and gave it to me for free. This story happened when I was a schoolboy. He was already a fervent fascist back then.”
“We played against Sparta. Our Lieutenant had some friends in the Sparta team, so he invited them over to come and have a match with us. We played against them but they were really good. I was an attacker and their defender, Jarda Burgr, kicked me in the knee in front of their goal. He was a fierce defender who was kicking the ball together with the others' legs. I was disqualified and had to be taken to the hospital. The doctor asked me what I had been doing. I said that we played football. He laughed and told me that we should better rest on Sundays. We lost the match and I stayed for two months in hospital. I think that they were still sparing us. They were really good.”
“We had a huge sack with a hundred kilograms of rice in the cooperative that was declared as a 'reserve'. One day, I received the order to ship that rice to the Hitlerjugend organization in Zruč nad Sázavou. I thought to myself: 'Our children are being denied that rice and the German bastards are gonna get it? No way! I'm not gonna give it to them!' I took the risk. I emptied the sack, stored the rice, and refilled it with barleycorn of the same dimensions. The next day, the barleycorn went to Zruč. Nothing happened! I was so scared, that I slept with the windows open, constantly looking out if someone wasn't coming to arrest me. But nothing ever happened. I even had a small gun ready to use in an emergency.”
Joseph Rýva was born on March 17, 1914, in Bernartice, district of Ledeč nad Sázavou. His father was a professional mason who fought in the First World War and returned home in 1918 with broken health. He never recovered again and suffered badly from rheumatism for the rest of his life. Joseph became a commercial assistant employed by the Jewish businessman Grün in Křivsoudov near Vlašim. Later, he also worked as a coal delivery operator in Kostelec nad Labem, in a large distillery in Milevsko near Tábor, or in the company Herold in Krč, Prague.
He was drafted to the army in 1936. He attended an officer cadet school in Theresienstadt and became a private of the 42nd infantry regiment six months later. He spent the crucial days of September 1938 with his unit in the border region of Křížový buk, where he was guarding an important crossroads between Krásná Lípa and Dolní and Horní Chřibská. Since 1940, Joseph was a shopkeeper in Dolní Kralovice. In the period of the existance of the so-called ‘Protectorate’, he became involved in the resistance movement and joined the underground resistance group ‘Želivka’ (later renamed to ‘Jan Kozina’). The main activities of the group included warning the population ahead of German economic inspections, the construction of bunkers, the hiding of fugitive prisoners and Russian paratroopers, etc. The resistance group was decimated by the Gestapo on January 27, 1945. It wasn’t before April 15 of the same year that the group was reconstituted and revived its activities.
After the war, Joseph moved to Litoměřice with his family, where he ran a grocery store. On October 20, 1949, he was arrested for anti-state activities and his shop was confiscated. He was a part of the show trial with Milada Horáková and was sentenced to 22 years in prison. He served half of his term in several prisons throughout Bohemia - Litoměřice, Kartouzy, Bory, Most, Ruzyně, Příbram and Leopoldov. In the end of the sixties, he briefly worked in Stuttgart, where he was an informer of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He was very lucky not to land behind bars again. He retired in 1974.
