Adolf Kůrka

* 1926

  • “I was patrolling on the bridge as a German guard. There is a turn-off from Odra. I think there were two bridges, I do not remember anymore. I was walking over the bridge at night. I didn’t even go far, because if a Russian was close by, he would shoot me. I was walking on the German side of the bridge. All of a sudden, a young man insolently appears there. A light-coloured hat, an overcoat, hands in his pockets. He is walking on the bridge towards me. He wanted to pass to the other side. I thought: What should I do? Should I shout: Halt? Should I get my gun ready to shoot him? He had his hands in his pockets, and he could have a gun in his hand, just in case. He could shoot me from two metres away. I did not say anything to him, I didn’t shout. He cheekily passed by me without even looking at me. He walked on and he disappeared. Who was he? Was he some friend of the Russians? The Russians were already on the opposite bank of the river. We were walking so close to death. And we were still in our teens.”

  • “All of a sudden I heard some noise from the right side. Voices of many people who were talking loud. We had received orders to be quiet and inconspicuous. The voices didn’t sound as German language. They were Russians. What to do now? We were sitting in a ditch by the road. Should we run back? It would be suspicious if they saw us running back. One of us said: ´We will pretend we are dead.´ At that time I had already lost my shoes in mud. I was barefoot, naked and I had a helmet on my head. What a sight, right? I was the first one from the right. The voices were getting closer and I looked up one more time. I was lying in the ditch and I looked on the ground once more. The soil was black and the wheat was growing high. The sky was reddish on the horizon, a new day was dawning, and I began to pray: ´God, I am still young, I have not enjoyed anything yet, and I am to die?´ At that moment as I was in the ditch I saw all my loved ones at home, standing above me and preparing for my death. I remembered how I once looked at a body of a dead Russian, who was killed expertly by a commissioner with a shot to the back of his neck. I was afraid of the shot to the nape, and so I moved the helmet a bit and I wished to get four or five shots in my back instead, that would kill me as well. As the noise was coming closer, I was not even breathing as I was scared. I was lying there, my feet in the wet ditch. My bare feet. I was lying there and they were already there and the steps of two men stopped and in their language I understood the word ´German´ four times. I was so scared that I didn’t even breathe so that they would not see my chest moving. The group continued walking, and only the steps of the two stopped and they said that we were dead. The ground was strewn with corpses on the Russian front.”

  • “That was where I saw a sexual intercourse for the first time. There were four women among us in the column. Young women in grey suits. All dressed in the same way. White blouses, and sharp-pointed collars. We kept walking on the main road. One evening we turned from the road to a turn-off road. There was a downhill slope in the field, and we thought that it would be the end for us there. As we walked on that field road, a Russian jumped into our column, grabbed one of the women by the collar and pulled her out. He threw her in the ground and he started grabbing her. The woman tried to defend herself. With her hands, legs, she was twisting her head. He was already kneeling over her, and she was still struggling. The Russian pulled out his gun, fired one shot next to her right ear, another next to her left ear, and the woman immediately lay still. The Russian satisfied himself and went away. The woman got up and rejoined the column.”

  • “We stood at attention and nothing was happening. After a while there comes a military policeman from the corner, leading a guy and a whole group with him. They brought the man inside a fenced area and made him stand there. An officer came to him: ´Sentenced to capital punishment, loss of military rank and all civil rights.´ The guy was pale, gaunt, and scared and he said something to the officer. He probably pleaded for his life. But the officer said: ´Nein, you have deserved this.´ He turned to the firing squad commander: ´Execute!´ And he stepped aside. The firing squad commander ordered: ´Attention, ready to fire. Attention – now!´ But they had blindfolded the soldier before it and tied his hands. I was standing close to him on the side. One of the soldiers went there and grabbed his hair and pulled him aside and covered him with a blanket. It didn’t take long and they brought another one. He was a robust man and his forehead was bandaged. They led him to the fence and the officer says: ´Sentenced to capital punishment. Do you want to say anything else?´ ´Nein.´ He turned to the commander: ´Execute.´ He raised the sabre again. ´Attention - fire.´ The guy must have seen the bloodied hair of the first man under the blanket. An officer came to him and shot him once more in the back of his neck, probably just to make sure. He grabbed him by his hair, raised the blanket and pulled him next to the first one. And still it was not over and they brought in another man.”

  • “There was an ash tree alley leading from the village. I hear from the side: ´Friend, friend, hilfe, help.´ Nobody wanted to go towards the school into the hands of the Russians. I didn’t go there either. There was one lieutenant and he went all the way to that soldier who had suffered a shot in his stomach and his intestines were coming out from his belly. The lieutenant put the man on his back and ran back with him. The Russians were shooting from the window at the lieutenant’s legs. He fell to the ground. He let the soldier with the open belly lie there and he crawled to the first house in the village where he reached help. He was wounded in his leg. I could not just stay there, because the boy was still crying there: ´Hilfe, hilfe.´ And so I went for him and I was pulling him. Meanwhile somebody brought a small wagon from the other side. He was still alive. We moved him to the wagon and he was sitting there, and he had his open intestines in his lap, but he was alive. They took him to the village, and so I don’t know what happened with him next.”

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We did not enjoy our teen years, we experienced a lot of fear instead

Adolf Kůrka when drafted to the wehrmacht
Adolf Kůrka when drafted to the wehrmacht
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

  Adolf Kůrka was born on December 17, 1926 in Štěpánkovice (Schepankowitz in German) in the Hlučín region. Just like most of the locals, in terms of their ethnicity the family considered themselves to be part of the Moravian (Moravec) ethnic group. While the occupied borderlands became part of the Sudetenland (Sudetengau) after the Munich agreement, the Hlučín region was incorporated directly into the Third Reich as part of the Prussian Silesia. Its inhabitants thus automatically became citizens of the Reich, which involved military conscription and joining the German army once a person reached adulthood. Adolf‘s brother Emil joined first: he was drafted directly from the seminary in Vidnava where he studied for priesthood. In summer 1941 he died in Ukraine during the campaign in the Soviet Union. Adolf Kůrka became a German soldier on the day of his seventeenth birthday. He served in western France for several months near the city La Rochelle, and after the Allied invasion he was involved in combat during the retreat as a member of the 16th infantry division (16th Volks-Grenadier-Division). During this time he witnessed the death of several of his friends. Adolf himself was wounded by shrapnel near the Vosges Mountains and he spent several weeks in a military hospital before he recovered. He was subsequently transferred to the 17th infantry division (17th Infanterie-Division), in which he experienced heavy combat in the territory of present-day Poland. He also took part in the covert operation which was to take over the chemical factory in Dyhernfurt (now Brzeg Dolný), where the chemical weapon of mass destruction called Tabun was being made. He spent the end of the war in northeastern Bohemia, where he was captured by Soviet soldiers on May 13, 1945. He spent several months in the prisoner-of-war camp in Sagan (present-day Polish town Żagań) before he was able to return home in September 1945. In October 1948 he was drafted to the Czechoslovak army. He spent the following twenty months mining coal in Dolní Suchá as a member of mining brigades. He now lives with his wife Anna in his native house in Štěpánkovice.