“About four of us classmates went to look at the Wenceslas Square on March 15, 1939. The Germans with tanks and military vehicles and so on were already there. I remember it well. There was a field kitchen by the statue of St. Wenceslas, and they were selling a pea mash for local people there. Since I spoke German, I asked that non-commissioned officer: ‘Why are you selling that mash here?’ And he replied to me in that sharp military German: ‘We want to exert a positive impression on the inhabitants of Prague.’ And I replied: ‘I doubt that this positive impression of yours would compensate for the fact that you have occupied our country!’ I felt very proud, I was eleven or thirteen years old, and I dared to answer him like this!”
“When they discovered the hiding place of the attackers in Resslova Street in the church of Sts Cyril and Methodius, (my friend Malý) told me: ‘We will go look there.’ We thus went there the day when the battle between the attackers and the SS men who surrounded them took place there. But we were not able to get there, because all the streets were closed by the police, and we thus walked from the back to Morán and from there through small alleys we got directly into Václavská Street, which leads directly to the church. And there was the office of the Association of Builders of the Capital City of Prague there in the first floor. My friend Malý knew the secretary, and he let us in, and we thus stood by the window and watched the entire attack from there. I thus remember when they were pumping the water inside, and all these well-known things about the taking of the church.”
“I took part in it, because I learnt from students, obviously, it was a generally known assembly place in front of the technical college on Charles Square. And then we marched, thousands of us, a huge procession towards the Castle. There was a closed street behind Lesser Town Square and we thus turned around and we walked towards Petřín through the Seminary Garden, and we climbed up this way. It was still covered with snow, I remember it. From up there we broke through, more or less by force, through the police line, and we stormed into the Castle courtyard. We stood there and then the police units began gathering there and appealing to us. We sent some of our representatives to the president, but of course they did not let them inside. And then they urged us to go away, and we remained standing there. This was followed by a command to attack, and we thus began singing the national anthem, and everybody stood attention, including the policemen. And we also sang the Slovak part, ‘Lightning over the Tatras,’ and it took a long time to sing the whole anthem. And when it was over: ‘Go away, immediately leave the place, in the name of the law!’ And before they started threshing us, we sang for the second time, so this had an effect one more time, but for the third time it no longer helped.”
Czech nobleman and a descendant of an ancient family, count Zdeněk Sternberg, was born August 15, 1923 in Prague. Since his youth he was growing up in one of the oldest Czech castles Český Šternberk. After completing private education corresponding to the elementary and higher elementary school he began studying at the Archbishopric Grammar School and later at the Real-gymnasium School in Prague. In 1939 he witnessed the arrival of the German army to Prague and in 1942 the attack of the Gestapo against the paratroopers in the crypt of the Sts Cyril and Methodius Church in Resslova Street. After 1948 he took part in the march of students in support of the president Edvard Beneš. He was persecuted due to his family origin after 1948. Zdeněk was not allowed to graduate from university and instead of regular military service he had to serve in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP). He worked as a miner in coal mines in Ostrava and later as a stagehand in the Music Theatre in Prague-Karlín. In 1968 he emigrated with his family to Bavaria and he lived in Austria for twenty-one years. After 1989 he returned to his homeland and the castle Český Šterberk was returned to him in the restitution process. Zdeněk now lives there. He has been married since 1955 and he has son Filip.
On the land in front of the house of Svatopluk Doubrava in Hradec Králové during the 1st international falcon hunting in ČSSR in the district of Hradec Králové in Vysoká nad Labem in the forest plant in Hořice 5th-8th November, 1965
On the land in front of the house of Svatopluk Doubrava in Hradec Králové during the 1st international falcon hunting in ČSSR in the district of Hradec Králové in Vysoká nad Labem in the forest plant in Hořice 5th-8th November, 1965
photo: Autor fotografie: archív Ing. Ivan Maroši, scan: Tomáš Krivjanský
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