Ivan Major

* Neznámý

  • “When we were retreating from Sokolovo, Bedřich, a deputy commandant of our squad, told me: ´You will ride this horse, because the cartman is now at the staff headquarters and there is nobody to lead this horse!´ I replied: ´But I don’t know how to work the horses!´ But there was a mortar we needed to pull away. The others began to retreat. And I looked and saw that the Germans were now hardly hundred meters behind me! So I took the horse and quickly followed our soldiers. I met them in a village; our squad was already there. On the way there, I passed by a Jewish man who was running and begging: ´Take me with you!´ I shouted to him to get on the wagon. Then we gave a ride to another soldier, the telephone operator Hájek, he always carried two of those big telephone drums with him. When we reached the village, there was a stack of hay, and Hájek got off and headed towards that stack. I told him: ´Hájek, you got to ride with us! Look, the Germans are now right behind us! And he replied that he just cannot help it, and he was already unbuttoning his trousers and running towards that stack. I wondered at it, but the Germans with their tanks had already reached the village. We had to ride on. And I have never seen him again. I don’t know what happended to him.”

  • “We agreed upon it on Sunday, and on Monday morning we left the house and rode about fifty kilometers by bus. Then we had to pass through deep forests and over the hills that are in that region. And eventually we crossed the border with the Soviet Union. We had not made any special preparation for this, we simply left one day. Nor did we need anyone to lead us over the border, there was a well-trodden path leading to the border. We followed this path and then we saw a border stone – on one side it said USSR, and on the other Czechoslovak Republic.”

  • “I will tell you one episode; it took place before Kiev. The armies were assembling here, the Soviets, our Czechoslovak soldiers.... all awaiting the attack on Kiev. Suddenly a Soviet soldier comes to us and brings us a leg of meat and asks: ´Boys, would you like some meat?´ We thought, well, why not. So we took it and after a little while when we had to move the mortars to another place, we found out one of our horses was missing. And so we realized where this meat came from...”

  • “Three kilometres behind the border we were sighted by a Russian patrol, by three officers. They fired the rifle. We had to get down on the ground. Three others came and they took us to some other place. We were interrogated. They locked us in a room and there we waited for a trial. There were several more interrogation session and then were sentenced in Starobělsk. Each of us got a three year penalty. I spent this time in several prisons – the both the district ones and the larger ones, like Stanislav for example.”

  • “What about your life after the war? Did you stay in the army?” “We were happy that the war was over. We looked forward to starting a new life. A life in peace. We were glad that the Germans had been defeated. However I cannot say that something would be different today, that there would be peace. Pray God that the nations would finally agree they would live without wars and struggle and misery.”

  • “When we were on our way to the front, we would practice with mortars everyday during the journey there. There was lot of snow, but whenever we reached a place, they moved our train to a side track leading to a forest, where nobody could see us. And there we had to get out of the wagons and learn whatever was needed. We rode a train to a place about three hundred kilometers from Sokolovo, and from there we had to walk. We walked only at night, and slept during the day. There were no trains running, because the Germans had ripped out the tracks when they were retreating. We would walk about 35 kilometres every day. In about ten days we reached Charkov, where we were supposed to get some rest. But around ten in the evening there was an alarm, and we had to go directly to Sokolovo, and in the morning we already joined the front.”

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    Praha, 14.10.2008

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    délka: 50:27
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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We were happy that the war was over and we looked forward to starting a new life. However I cannot say that there would be peace even today.

Ivan Major comes from Carpathian Ruthenia. His parents were small independent farmers and Ivan was also helping on the family farm. In 1939, Carpathian Ruthenia became occupied by the Hungarian army, and Ivan therefore together with two other friends decided to leave for the Soviet Union. They managed to cross the border, but about three kilometers behind the line they were all captured by a Soviet border patrol. After sessions of interrogations they were sentenced to three years of imprisonment. Mr. Major went through several Russian prisons - Starobělsk, Stanislav, Pečora and others; afterwards he was transported to Siberia and interned in a labour camp there. At the beginning he was released in amnesty and together with others he went to Buzuluk to join the army there. After only seven days spent in the barracks his unit moved to the front. He was assigned to a mortar unit, in which he fought till the end of the war. The soldiers were transported to a place about three hundred kilometers from Sokolovo, from which the troops had to walk the rest of the distance to Sokolovo. In 1942 he wet through an NCO training academy and in September returned to the front again, this time in Kiev, which they liberated jointly with the Soviet Army. From there the troops advanced further to Ruda and Bílá Cerkev, where the fighting was very intense. Mr. Major was wounded by a splinter which hit his thigh. After being treated in a Czechoslovak field hospital he continued with his unit to Sagadura, where the Czechoslovak army corps was being organized in 1944. After the outbreak of the Slovak national uprising his unit participated in the Carpathian-Dukla operation. At Dukla he sustained another injury, this time by a splinter which penetrated his lung. He spent many months in hospitals and the injury caused permanent damage to his health. After that, he did not return to action anymore. After the war he remained in the army for two more years; then worked in a tobacconists´ and in the Jednota grocery shops chain. He is retired now, but still actively involved in various war veterans´ unions, especially the Czechoslovak Association of Legionaries.