Ladislav Janouch

“From Benešov, from the exerzierplatz, occupied German territory, there was a division moving up, Totenkopf I think it was called. And there was a little strip of grass in front of the villa, with people running to and fro, and the Germans started shooting at them. And one young boy – he lived in the house there, or next door – the Germans shot him there. He lay there and no one could go to him. The Germans assaulted us and started yelling: ‘Keine Partisanen?!’ And I, being quite used to German, I started shouting: ‘Nein, keine, keine, keine.’ But we rushed back home before the Germans came because we were armed, we both had pistols; we looked for a place to hide them because we were convinced that the Germans would search the houses. We shifted the cooker away from the wall in the kitchen, pulled out the chimney pipe that led from it, and stuck the pistols and bullets in there. And then the Germans took me hostage. I got myself out of it, but in such an odd kind of way. There was shooting there all the time, bullets whizzing around, and no one knew where they were coming from. And there was a German soldier with me there in the yard, who was guarding me, and suddenly someone shot that soldiers in the buttocks, from the back, in the hip. He turned and fell to the ground. The Germans started an alarm, rushed outside, took him, and pulled him in. I stayed there, the situation calmed down, all was quiet. Now what? Are they to shoot me? So I mustered my courage and dashed off, climbed over one fence that was there, and started to run.”

“We found ourselves amidst a running crowd, and then we could dodge through to the foot of the Hrdlořezy hill, which was scarred with trenches as protection for the surrounding factories. And the only thing we could do was to jump into the trenches, deep or not, and hope that if we stick our head as low down as possible, it might perhaps miss us. When we came running out into the main street, we heard the whirr, booming like; when a bomber group approaches, it gives out this dark, booming noise. It was almost a hundred bombers. We looked round and saw them coming, they were somewhere above the western part of Prague. And you could see the bombs dropping down like a curtain. So I reckoned they’d be upon us in a moment.”

“Heydrich went to Vienna, and they set up a stone that damaged the railroad switch. They did it in a way that not a single stone was in sight. When there’s a stone in the switch, it can’t be clenched. Anyway, so they damaged it somehow, and the train couldn’t go through. And so Heydrich sat there among the cliffs and waited in the train. There was a dreadful alarm, and it took about three hours before the train could carry on again. Unfortunately, it got through, nothing happened, but on the other hand I’m actually grateful for that – otherwise I wouldn’t be here telling you about it. Because if there had been even the slightest shade of suspicion that the thing was set up, and no one from our family nor from the signalman’s family would be here. If a switch is damaged like that, you can never exactly predict if the train will derail or not. And if it does, there’s a chance that it also flips over. And it was an express with free passage ensured along the whole track from Prague to Vienna. Nothing was allowed to impede it on the way, no trains, no crossings, everything stood stock still on the track. It had express, free passage from station to station. Dad was courageous, and Mr Ludvík Dluhoš, the signalman, was also courageous, but it stank of the grave.”