Jan Štach

When they came, I learned about the Sudeten Germans. When I was in the third year of the Gymnázium, it was on 15th March, when the German soldiers arrived in Vsetín. They were not Sudeten Germans, Sudetenland was only in the North-West of Bohemia and according to the Celts it was called the Mountains of Wild Pigs. We had to go out to welcome the German soldiers, but we lowered our ties “half the mast“. And then I learned that the Germans (in Vsetín lived about 20 of them) shouting Heil Hitler, Sieg Heil welcomed the German soldiers with excitement. The second time when I learned about the Sudeten Germans was when they came to arrest my brother. My brother was not at home. There came three Gestapo Germans from Brno. One of them spoke Czech, was holding a pistol in his hand and was yelling at us that he would shoot us all. I refused to do something and he slapped me wih such a might that I fell onto the floor. My mother was crying and the Sudeten German was shouting at her that she had badly raised her son. And there was a German who could not speak a word of Czech and he was touching her in a friendly way so as not to cry. This was how I learned that the Sudeten Germans were much worse than the Germans. I even had some friends in Germany, transferred, and that´s why I don´t like the politician who used to be the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Schwarzenberg, because he apologized to the Germans. Or he instigated Václav Havel to apologize. They should deserve a death sentence for what they had done to us.

As the war approached or was coming to an end, partisans came to Moravian Wallachia from Sovakia, with their commander Ušiak. But he was betrayed and killed and Murzin took over. Petr Buďko was another one I used to know. A captain who became a partisan when he fell off the plane. He was a pilot. I liked him and got to know him at the beginning of the year 45. He spoke about president Beneš and how he met him in Moscow. They slept in our small room under the roof where the commander of the Obrana národa Mr Lorenc from Zlín was hiding and where they held their meetings. My brother protected them from the Gestapo and brought them to Slovakia because he walked about the forest and knew it well. There they hid and slept at night.