Vasil Špir

* 1922

  • “Once I was delivering grenades to one of the units but when I arrived on the spot, I found out that they had already left. They just left me a note pinned to one of the trees: “leave it here, we’ll pick it up later with horses”. So I was unloading the boxes with the grenades, I was throwing them on the ground. All of a sudden, Svoboda was riding by on his horse. He said: “what are you doing man? You’re gonna get killed and destroy the car”. I had quite a lot to do with Svoboda. We were driving day and night. In the Dukla pass, there were tons of mud, it was terrible.”

  • “I remember a story from Vyšný Komárnik. A Russian driver was backing up with his truck and hit a land mine. The explosion blew the car to pieces but he was unhurt. He got out of the wreckage and the first thing he asked for was his cap: “Where’s my cap?” He was in shock, he didn’t understand yet what had happened. He didn’t care for his wrecked car but was upset about his lost cap. This was kind of a funny story”

  • “There were about sixty shafts. When we arrived there all that was there were a few shabby shacks. When we were leaving, we were going by train – the prisoners had built a railroad to Vorkuta. So we worked in the shafts till 1942 when the exile government in London requested our release. We were supposed to go to Buzuluk, to the Czechoslovak army.”

  • “At Kiev it wasn’t so bad. It was much worse at Biela Cerekev. We suffered much more there. It was a slaughter and the frost was terrible. When you spit somewhere it froze instantly. I was wounded at Biela Cerekev. It happened on the fourth or so. So they put me in a Russian hospital and after I had recovered I went back to my unit.”

  • “When the order came they gave us new clothes, new trousers – everything was brand new. But when we came to Buzuluk we looked like rags. We changed everything for food because we were given food rations for ten days – it was called “pajok” – but the journey lasted forty days. So we had to steal food wherever we could, usually on the railway stations, where we were stealing millet, rye and wheat. When we were handed out food we cooked. There were trains that were carrying exclusively “zaključonyje” – prisoners.”

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    Byt Vasila Špira, Nové Strašecí, 23.04.2006

    (audio)
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“When we crossed the bridge over the river the Germans were ahead of us and the Dnieper River behind us. If the Germans had moved a bit faster, we would all have drowned. It was a really bad situation.”

Vasil Špir on a contemporary photograph from the time of the Second World War
Vasil Špir on a contemporary photograph from the time of the Second World War
zdroj: Soukromý archiv Vasila Špira

Vasil Špir, a retired Colonel, was born in 1922 in Carpathian Ruthenia. After the occupation of his motherland in 1940, he decided to flee to the Soviet Union. He was joined in this venture by his friend, but they were both arrested shortly after they had crossed the border of the USSR. They were interrogated and Mr. Špir was sentenced to three years of prison for illegally crossing the Soviet border. He spent these three years working in the coal mines of a forced-labor camp in Vorkuta.He was released in 1942 and sent to Buzuluk to join the Czechoslovak Army Corps. He was trained as an infantry soldier. He fought with his unit at Kiev and Biela Cerekev, where he was wounded in 1944. Afterwards, he was transferred to the mechanized company where he first served as a co-driver and later as a driver of a Studebaker truck. He participated in the battle of Dukla and the liberation of Czechoslovakia. Shortly before the end of the war he was wounded for the second time. After the war, he remained in the Army. In 1965, he completed his secondary education. He currently lives in Nový Strašecí.