Ladislav Koza

* 1923

  • “When I ran away from the forced labor in Germany my father, who worked at the police in Kladno at the time, received a report about it three days later. They knew that I lived in Kladno so they informed the local police that they were supposed to watch out for me. Therefore I went voluntarily back, I returned. I got a few slaps from my superior for running away and I went back to work.”

  • “As I’ve said before, I ran away about three or four times from Germany. They wouldn’t let me cross the border with the Kennkarte so I just travelled to Bílina, to Chotějovice and there was a company that shipped coal to Czechoslovakia. These guys helped me. Up to Louny, where the frontier with the Sudetenland began, I could stay in the compartment. From there, they put me into the cargo car and covered me with coal. In this way I crossed the frontier. Well as I’ve said, it was crazy stuff.”

  • “In Kladno, an engineering-school student shot a German soldier, the soldier’s name was Kniest. The Germans reacted by closing down all secondary school – the school of engineering, the business academy and the pedagogical institute. So I didn’t have anything to do and therefore I worked in the shaft. I remember that. Then I worked in the metal works. Later I commuted to Prague because my parents didn’t want me to do such heavy work. I was looking for a new job and I got into that company Baal movies.”

  • “The Russians came in their tank. We told them that there was a gun fight. I’ll never forget that. Bullets were flying in the air, I swear, bullets were flying everywhere around. That Russian, he climbed out of the tank and went to the entrance gate. They kicked the gate open. We were guarding the place but we were so freaked out we would shoot everything that moved. They just went inside, ignoring the fire… They didn’t care for their lives or they must have been totally drunk.”

  • “I was a lathe operator. They re-trained me as a lath operator and I was making torpedoes. The lathe was bigger than this whole room.” Interviewer: “How did the semi-finished product look like? Was it a cylinder?” “Yes, it was a regular cylinder, a pipe about three meters in diameter. We only processed the centre, the head and bottom was processed by someone else.” Interviewer: “So the pipe came and what did you do? What did you lathe?” “We just lathed the top and the centre. We lathed the outer coating and the inside of the pipe. We were just turning the pipe. Then we did the screw threads on both sides because the head and the bottom had to be screwed to the body. It was a good job because I just had to mount it and watch it and that was my shift.”

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    Teplice, 13.05.2009

    (audio)
    délka: 01:40:46
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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The year 1945 was drawing closer and then, in March, we fled from Germany for the last time -- forever

Ladislav Koza.jpg (historic)
Ladislav Koza
zdroj: foto: Lukáš Krákora

Ladislav Koza was born on October 17, 1923, in Lískovice nearby Bílina. His native village doesn‘t exist anymore - it was razed to the ground because of coal mining. His father served as a legionnaire in Russia in the First World War and after. He commanded the 3rd machine-gun platoon „Jan Žižka z Trocnova“. After he returned from Russia, he worked mostly for the police. His mother, née Kremrová, managed the household. After his father took up the job with the police, the family moved to Liberec and later to Teplice. In 1938, after the Sudetenland had been annexed, the Koza family had to move again. First they migrated to Kremč, near Roudnice, then to Kladno where his father worked for the Czech police until 1944. In Kladno Ladislav Koza briefly continued to study at the pedagogical institute. Then, after the secondary schools were closed down, he worked in a mineshaft and then in the local metalworks. Later he found an occupation with the firm Baal movies in Prague. After six months of employment with this firm he had to go to Germany for forced labor. He worked for the armaments company Rheinmetall Borsig where he lathed torpedoes. He tried to run away repeatedly but was caught and imprisoned, among other places in Pankrác and Ruzyně. After another breakaway, he spent the rest of the war in a re-educational and labor camp in Mirošov, near Pilsen. He participated in the Prague uprising at the very end of the war. He guarded important objects armed with a rifle and a hand grenade in Prague 6 (among other objects the premises of the Ministry of the Interior that some German soldiers used as a last resort). After the war, he returned to Teplice where in 1947 he married Lotte, née Lebovičová, who had survived the Holocaust. They had their only son Petr in 1948. After the war he worked mostly as a teacher and school principal, later he also worked as an observer in meteorological stations.