Jan Šabršula

* 1918  †︎ 2015

  • “On January 18, 1940, we were standing on the ‘Apelplatz’ for the whole night. It was freezing and we didn´t have coats or gloves. We weren’t allowed to move, so I could only bend my toes to avoid frostbite. Some of the students suffered from severe frostbite. In front of the opposite house we could see the Czech mayors, old gentlemen. One by one they fell down and froze to death. There must have been dozens of them.

  • “On November 16, I came back to our dormitory very late that night. After a short rest I was woken up by a terrible noise and floodlights from the street. At first I thought it was an air-raid. I opened the door of our bedroom and saw students standing in the corridor with their hands up. I woke up my roommate, we got dressed and waited. At our place students were arrested without incidents, but in other places students were beaten up and the Germans put them in trucks in their pajamas. We waited a long time and then the trucks started to arrive and took us to Ruzyně.”

  • “Opletal was shot in the belly and his friends took him to the hospital. The Gestapo came and took the bullet, but the Czech doctors had seen it. It was not a bullet from a military gun, but from a civilian one, probably a Browning. So I think Opletal might have been shot by a German student.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha - Radotín, 23.11.2011

    (audio)
    duration: 01:56:00
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Praha 16, Radotín, 15.10.2013

    (audio)
    duration: 01:49:05
    media recorded in project Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
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The most important thing in life is to not let yourself get discouraged by obstacles standing in your way

Jan Sabrsula, photo from the civil document
Jan Sabrsula, photo from the civil document
photo: archiv pamětníka, sbírka Post Bellum

Jan Šabršula was born in 1918 in Bojkovice near Uherský Brod. His father was the headmaster of the business academy and the chief of a local youth organization („Sokol”). In 1937, Jan Šabršula joined the army and started to study at the military academy. In 1938, he served in the borderland nearby Slavonice. In the autumn of 1939, he started to study French and German at the Faculty of Philosophy in Prague. He stayed at the Masaryk dormitories in Dejvice. In November 1939, he took part in the anti-Nazi demonstrations. He was arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp , where he stayed till December 1940. His father was arrested in 1941 and died in Auschwitz. In May 1945, Jan Šabršula took part in the uprising against German occupants in Havlíčkův Brod and as a volunteer he cooperated with the Red Army in the arrest of German soldiers. After the war, he finished his studies and he worked as a teacher at several secondary schools and at the Faculty of Philosophy in Prague. Jan Šabršula travelled to France several times, mainly  for study and work purposes. For communists, France was listed among the “capitalist foreign countries” and Šabršula needed their permission for his journeys. In 1962 he was contacted by the intelligence service of the Ministry of defence as a reserve officer with knowledge of foreign languages. In February 1963 Jan Šabršula signed a commitment of secret collaboration with a codename “Vědec” (Scientist). In June 1964 he was evaluated as reluctant and useless and excluded from the collaboration. According to the archive documentation no cooperation was developed with him. Died in 2015.