Jan Martínek

* 1921

  • "We came to Belgium - there is the French-Belgian border, to Ostend. And there I was the driver of the command tank crew. Of course, there were Germans near Dunkirk, and it was difficult for them to give up this environment. So, the French, Americans, we Czechs raided and I think the Poles were there too. I think it was May the 8th when we were about to raid again in the morning... The end of the war."

  • "Before we left England, we met in London with President Beneš and Jan Masaryk, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He said goodbye to us and wished us to endure until the end of the war that the war would soon be over."

  • "It was so calm and I thought it's a time for me to run away, and I took advantage of that moment. Of course, I had a uniform. If I had a civilian suit, it would be quite easier for me. So, I saw some civilians, I tried to get to them. I am no Germany, I am Czechoslovak! I'm not German, but I'm Czech. They could understand it, but they didn't have to. So, they took me to the barn and I sat there in the uniform for three days. They brought me food there. And those grenades, the front was so tangled there and I was waiting for it (how it would end) ... Either it shoots into the barn here - there was hay, straw - and that would be my end... I survived."

  • "Of course, in the meantime, my parents signed the foglist and I, without signing anything, I have a document there, so I had to join the German army. I was taken in Hlivice. After the conscription, I was on vacation and I was supposed to enlist in the German military service, and I missed the deadline again. I didn't board, so I had such problems again that they wanted to arrest me immediately and so on. But it ended up that I had to join the army again as soon as possible."

  • "It was not until two years later that I was given a week's vacation to go home. A week and I was supposed to go back to this place. I came home after two years, a week passed and I didn't report anywhere and I didn't go back. I had the police there in a fortnight, they immediately took me to Jablunkov to the employment office, that I had to go back immediately to the place where I worked."

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    Martínek Jan

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What a waste of love at Liverpool dock

Tankers of the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Armored Brigade - illustration photo, valka.cz
Tankers of the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Armored Brigade - illustration photo, valka.cz
zdroj: valka.cz

Jan Martínek was born on August 15, 1921 in Návsí u Jablůnkova. The area was passed to Poland as a result of the Munich dictatorship in 1938, and the inhabitants of the Czech nationality faced repression from the Poles. A year later, when Nazi Germany occupied the territory, Jan and his sister were sent to Germany for forced labor. He first worked on a farm north of Berlin and later closer to his home in Gleiwitz (now Gliwice in Poland). The witness‘s parents signed the so-called Deutsche Volkliste charter and thus became imperial citizens. Jan Martínek received a call-up order to join the Wehrmacht. He was identified as a truck driver due to a heart defect. He first cleared the consequences of the Hamburg bombing and was later sent to central France, where he decided to run away in the summer of 1944 during a battle with the Allies. After captivity and interrogation in Naples, he traveled by ship to Great Britain. He completed training with the tank battalion and personally experienced the meeting of Edvard Beneš and Jan Masaryk with soldiers. At the end of the war, he intervened in the siege of Dunkirk. After returning to Czechoslovakia, he left the army on December 23, 1945.