Josef Maňák

* 1918

  • “We escaped from Prague with my future brother-in-law. We didn't stay in a student dorm, but in a private apartment, and we thus ran away immediately and hid in the attic of a mill in Litvínovice. We were hiding up there in one of the buildings and girls were bringing us food there. When things then got quieter, we came out. Therefore we didn't get imprisoned like the other students.”

  • “One of the SS men had a huge furuncle at the back of his neck and the German doctor in the camp was treating him with some ointments. When Wiener asked what should be done about it, I and another doctor – a Jew from Olomouc who was there – said: ´Operation is the only way, you need to excise it.´ I thus gave him anaesthesia and the other guy, who had already completed his studies of medicine, performed the surgery. This way I have earned some trust from that Gestapo commander.”

  • “He was under the surveillance of the Secret Police, we all were. Dad didn't believe it. We lived in a street which crossed Široká Street, and I told Dad: ´Look, there is a car over there in Široká, two guys with berets on their heads sitting inside. They are from the StB and they are watching us.´ They could see our house comfortably from there. Or there would be a car standing on the tram tracks right next to the adjacent house. One day I said to Dad: ´The StB men are here. Right in that car over there.´ Dad walked over to those two men and told them: ´If you are waiting for my son, he has left for Trhové Sviny to see the daughter who is married there, and he will be back today around six.´ They never watched us from that spot anymore.”

  • “At the beginning we suffered from hunger terribly. Only on Christmas we were then allowed to receive some package sent from home. But at the beginning the hunger was terrible. We were thus stealing. There was a field where beans were grown, and we were stealing them and cooking them, so that we could have at least something to eat.”

  • “One day he flew a reconnaissance flight alone, because there was fog and they couldn’t fly as they normally would. As he was coming back from the recon mission over Germany, a shrapnel from a grenade hit his oil tank when he was over the Dutch island Walcheren. He tried to make it to England, but his plane fell into the sea about six miles from the coast. He had saved himself in the dinghy, but since the wind was blowing in the opposite direction, it carried him back to the Dutch shore and the Germans captured him there. But he tore off his Czechoslovak insignia from his uniform and pretended to be a Canadian. Thanks to this he got to the Canadian POW camp.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Písek, 01.06.2009

    (audio)
    délka: 01:12:09
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Písek, 27.06.2012

    (audio)
    délka: 53:00
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

We all claimed that brother was a clerk, and not a pilot, and therefore they released us

Josef Maňák, prewar photo
Josef Maňák, prewar photo
zdroj: archiv Josefa Maňáka

MUDr. Josef Maňák was born February 17, 1918 in České Budějovice. After completing elementary school and reformed grammar school he went to Prague to study medicine. Since he did not live in a student residence hall, he avoided the mass arrests of students on November 17, 1939 and he was able to take a train to Litvínovice. However, he eventually got arrested later because of his brother Jiří Maňák, who had escaped to France and England, where he served in the RAF. On September 14, 1942 Josef and all his family were arrested in the „Emikgration Aktion“ and imprisoned in Tábor, then in the Kounic student residence hall, in Svatobořice and in Lutín, where he worked on construction of a railway track for a Messerschmitt assembly factory. In April 1945 he and his family were released and he went to České Budějovice, where he witnessed the end of the war. After the war he completed his studies of medicine and then he worked as an ear and throat specialist. Later he became the head of a hospital department in Písek, a town where he now lives.