Eduard Šlachta

“We were behind the city. Voralarm. Richtung fest. That was a total mess. When planes were approaching, we had to set out. We had a long garage behind the town, and it was used as a school. But it was actually a wooden garage, which had twelve gates and we had to get into our fire-fighting cars and set out… If bombs were dropped on the garage, everything would go up in a smoke, and therefore each of us had his tree, about 50 or hundred metres from each other, under which we were waiting. So a Voralarm was sounded, we jumped into the cars, we were called at nights and during the day as well. Americans were bombing in daylight, and the English were flying individual bombers or in smaller formations at nights. We got out and we tried to help those women who were there. Each of them with three kids and no men around, because the men were already dead, or on the sea, or somewhere on the front. If we had time, we took the children, and there was a concrete bunker in the ground, there was no other place to cover. We led the children there, and when possible, sat with them inside for some time. But mostly, after the bombs have been dropped, we got orders to go and we did not know whether we would come back. The Americans were flying in formations. And you were called to set out, and two formations passed above you, and the roar resonated throughout the town. And then the first group began dropping bombs. At first we were called to the castle, there was a bay, fifteen kilometers. On one side of the bay there was a Kruppwerke submarine, on the bottom part, just like in the town. And we were called to the castle, that there was a fire. They bombed at noon, the bombers always flew in at half past eleven. And I did not know where exactly, and then I heard that there were four more formations, 60 pounds each, heading toward Kiel. They could also be flying toward Hamburg, Hamburg was hundred kilometres away. But you were headed towards the town, and in the roar of your car, you don’t even feel the horror. I was lucky, I was even burned one time, just look at it here, it happened when I deactivated a bomb.”

“I only don’t understand this, you said you worked in a court?” “I wanted to study law, I was in Prague twice, and I was summoned to the factory’s committee, and I was told that I received this decision from Prague, but that there is the issue of Party membership, and that the Party cannot have lawyers like me. But at the same time there was recruitment for lay judges. So I applied and became a lay judge, at that time this position was held by old grannies, who were retired, and sleeping during the proceedings… I was assigned to do divorce cases, and then in the regional criminal court, I was deciding murder cases, rapes, and damages over 5 million crowns, then it was raised to 5 milliard crowns.” “And as you said, you worked in the Vítkovice factory, and besides that, you served in the tribunal?” “That’s right.” “And at first you worked on divorce cases, and than you moved to murders?” “Lately I was deciding only murder cases…I quit a year or two ago.”

“I was in prison over Christmas, and I was terribly lucky. In the place where we lived before, next to the Sokol gymnasium, there lived some Fischer. He was not that old, but he had shadows under his eyes, sickly-looking… a German. And all he would always say was just ´Morgen,´ when my mother greeted him. And his wife had two children, I don’t remember exactly, during the war we would only meet in hallway of the building, it was seventy years ago. And he always… walking slowly… And then during Christmas, I was locked up in the cell, they did not have much information on me, they did not know that I was involved in the resistance. But they must have found out my name on some list, and therefore I got arrested as well. Because most of our people had been already taken to Breslau, and some were still in court. And that night I was terribly lucky, after several days the door opened, and there he was, in a uniform, I don’t remember whether they also wore the Totenkopf (skull) emblem. Well, he was a warden there. And this sickly Fischer, whom I only heard utter ´Morgen,´ now speaks to me in Czech and asks me: ´What are you doing here, Mr. Šlachta?´ And I looked at him in surprise, at his uniform. And he had apparently seen my name written on a list of prisoners in the prison office, and thus he came to me at midnight. He asked: ´What do you need?´ I replied: ´Are the others here?´ He told me: ´Don’t be afraid.´ I would have never thought in my life that he was a German, we did not know each other much, he lived two floors above our flat. And he asked, ´Do you need anything?´ I asked again, ´Are they here?´ ´Yes, there are four more.´ Kenkúš – the others were in Breslau, unfortunately, in Dresden there was a heavy air-raid, and my good friends died there – Jura Novák – during that bombing… And he asks: ´Do you need anything?´ I kept asking : ´Are they here?´ ´Don’t be afraid,´ he said: ´Yes, he is here,´ he said. Láďa Kenkúš, who was sort of our boss when we organized our group. A very intelligent boy. They were students, but when the Germans closed colleges, they went to work in the Vítkovice factory, and they also carried out sabotage in smaller scale there, like inserting something into bearings they made. And he said: ´You will have him here tomorrow midnight.´ There were probably two of them on duty, and on top of that they all knew that the war was coming to an end.”

“It was On December 8th, around noon, snow was flying in the air and on the bridge over the Ostravice a Steyer car passed, it rode towards Hrušovany, and we looked at it because at that time it was not so common for cars to go in this direction, and this car came for me. We arrived there, got off the tram; there was a tram line to Bohumín. We got off and my colleague Samek Juraj, who was with me in Germany, called me, and two Gestapo men stood there, and behind a corner there was a car with a third Gestapo member. We came and ´Šlechta, geboren (born) 1924.´ They nodded their heads, we sat in their car: ´Do you know who we are?´ Lang, Hitlinger, and I cannot remember the name of the third one, he was from Nový Jičín, and they asked again whether we knew who they were and I said: ´I don’t know.´ And he said: ´Gestapo.´ The inside of the car it smelled of some perfume, they were probably going to some party. And we arrived to sand-pits, it was near Zábřeh, now there are housing estates there. And they wanted to shoot me. But I was saved. He told me: ´Get out!´ Their names were Kamf, Lang and Hitlinger.” “Hold on, you are telling me that Gestapo came for you and without any trial or imprisonment they took you straight to some sand-pit and wanted to shoot you? “ “The Gestapo was not acting in disguise, they wanted to shoot me, because the end of the war was approaching, and perhaps they were ordered to arrest me, they probably found some information on us, but I did not know what.” “OK, so what happened in that sand-pit?” “They brought me there and wanted to shoot me and then go somewhere else. This Kamf tells me: ´Get out!´ So I got out of the car. ´Stand there and don’t look back.´ He shouted at me something like that and I prayed, they wanted to shoot me, and I felt sorry, the war was almost over, he would shoot me in my head, and this would kill me instantly, because if he shot me in my body, he would fire a second shot into my face when I fell on the ground. I almost prayed and then a Russian fusillade was heard in the distance, din and roar of cannons. And they probably realized that, when they were at Moscow, Rommel was done with after Africa, in France Germany was already defeated, the war was already over there, and they slowly began to understand it. One of them was shouting. ´Ich werde schlossen´ (I want to shoot him), or something like that, and the others told him ´Are you nuts?´ and they talked him out of it and convinced him not to shoot.”