František Koraba

* 1928

  • "With the help of the keys obtained, all our fellow prisoners in our wing of the building and all other fellow prisoners were liberated from the entire Gestapo building. It was soon discovered who the high black officer's boots belonged to. In front of the Gestapo building was a group of tanks, smoking and wearing black-capped military caps in open hatches. Not in helmets, so not in military clothes, which was the name of Hitler's elite units. And that explained the participation of one of them, who entered the building and stood at the door for a while."

  • "Then the crucial task came - break down the door and get to the hallway. It took us about half an hour before we managed to loosen the whole frame with the help of the valve so that we gained the certainty that we had won. In a relaxed position, the two of us could barely fit. Me and Zdeněk Štróbl. So, Zdeněk and I took turns. Believe me, it was not easy to commit to this demolition. Most of the fellow prisoners discouraged us from going crazy that the Gestapo was there, and if they found out what we were trying to do, they would simply kill us. And if they're really gone, someone would definitely set us free from the outside. We were constantly reminded that we would all lose our lives because of us, because of me and Zdeněk."

  • "I had the opportunity to get to know the life of these Gestapo people, twice, when the guards with vending machines took us to the opposite building to the SS heim, where there was also a kitchen for all Gestapo workers. There was also a skittle alley within this area, where in their free time, and especially in the evening until the night, they enjoyed playing skittles, which we had to build for them. They even offered us cigarettes and snorts of their alcohol sniff. Perhaps to show off to the ladies who kept them company and who also spoke Czech."

  • "When it was my turn, I handed over all my personal belongings. Only [then] did I realize that among all things I had, until then I had not remembered it at all, those unfortunate twenty rubles. I don't know at all why I took them with me to the trenches and why I always had them with me. [There were] questions from who I got them, how I came to them. In short, it was embarrassing and even humiliating. At the end, at the age of sixteen, I lost eight healthy teeth, leaving me with only roots. It was enough to hit twice with a bundle of keys on an iron ring with a thickness of one centimeter, once on each side. I don't even know where all the defiance came from and the [effort] not to automatically [show] the following tears at the same time swallowed with the remnants of the found dental fragments.

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    Poděbrady, 10.10.2014

    (audio)
    délka: 02:18:43
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
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He lost eight teeth because of twenty rubles

František Koraba was born on March 29, 1928 in Nový Hrozenkov in the Vsetín region. He spent his childhood until 1938 in Košťany near Teplice, and after the occupation of the Sudetenland, their family lived in Poděbrady. At the beginning of 1945 he had to start forced labor - digging trenches. He traveled with other pioneers to Bukovany near Olomouc. Zdeněk Štróbl who was a year older than the witness became his faithful friend, with whom they planned a runaway and fled together. On the evening of April 13, 1945, they fled to Olomouc, from where a railway worker was to arrange their journey by train. On the way to Olomouc, they were stopped by a German patrol. After being detained, they were first imprisoned in a nearby fortification, and then taken to the Gestapo building in Olomouc. During the interrogation, the investigators found out that the witness had 20 rubles, and because of that, he allegedly lost eight teeth at that time. He managed to escape from prison to the nearby Příkazy, where the witness was wounded. After his recovery, he went back to Poděbrady with his friend Zdeněk. The witness‘s parents, meanwhile, believed that their son had been executed in Brno by the Gestapo. František Koraba lived in Poděbrady at the time of filming the interview (2014).