František Pollak

* 1931

  • "And we as boys, where we could, there we were shooting. And once we had a grenade rifle and… On the top, in front of Mlýniště, there the main power line led from the bridge to Liberec, across the Elbe. It is still there today, there are the columns. And the grenade rifle, I don't know how it happened. He put it there, that's how he put it [on his shoulder] and the bullet got out. And it broke through one wire on that power line. And now the one wire that got twisted was falling in the direction of Dobětice here, and it was throwing sparks. The one which was falling down to the stream, that was ok. Well, we ran away again. And we ran here to the edge, here you have a forest, and so we lied down there and we were watching. And the Russians came, in a squadron, and went."

  • "It was the second or third house, which was hit by a bomb. Well, yes, but in that forest on Větruše and down that road - corpses, children, women and prisoners. The Russians, the French, I don't know what it's all about… They escaped into the forest and the bombs fell into the forest. And as there are the anti-aircraft shelters today, it's a museum, so above that, you can still see it, it's overgrown, as the bombs fell, it's overgrown. The whole of it was… And in that Bílinská street, down there, there were corpses on the road. When we went there and it was already evening, by bike. The weather was nice and we pushed everything there. And up, to the Grand, the road that led there, it was all bombed, too. So, we took it back from there and went to Grand. It was not possible to drive. And there were camps, between Větruše and ... I don't know, perhaps everything was bombed. I do not know, but the prisoners… they were mostly Russians. In that forest, in Větruše. I will never forget that in my life."

  • "There was also a camp of Ukrainian women, but it was unguarded. There was a French prison of war camp in the distillery, but they had free movement, so they went there to see the Ukrainians. And in between, there was a ditch like this and there was a road, it was only the fields there, so they planted the unexploded bombs there. And they were bombs from such small to, for example, two meters. And there they folded them into a pyramid, in that field, between that brewery garden. The Germans put it together, the prisoners detonated unexploded bombs. And we were watching it as boys. You saw that from the beginning from the barrel, the bomb, all the way down to the base. And there was a hole in the middle, I don't know what it was. And you saw through the bomb, it was such a hole. And we as boys there… it wasn't guarded, so we got a string, soaked it and pushed the string into one of the bombs, which was the last. Like that pyramid. And we went very far and we set it on fire, the string. We wondered what it would do. Well, the string burned and into the bomb... but it didn't explode. But it was weird! The whole of Krásné Březno, the distillery stopped working, everyone stopped working. It was just a black smoke everywhere."

  • "After the war, they set up a gathering camp up in Všebořice and expelled the Germans there. And here, not far from here, there they again expelled the men. And there they had to go to work, clear the demolition in Krásné Březno, after the explosion. They marched and they beat them during the march. Children who had to wear white tapes, some of whom were expelled, so when we went into the…, they took them off. But that was after the explosion. So, we went, we took our bikes with us, we met and went to Ústí. And here was the fountain, as Bohemka is today, there was a fountain nearby, and as Spořitelna is, there were the ropes stretched in the square, there were such… [obstructions] and there everyone [who had white belts] - women, men, they brought them all there."

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    Ústí nad Labem, 02.07.2020

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Five boys in the war

František Pollak at the end of the war
František Pollak at the end of the war
zdroj: archive of the witness

František Pollak was born on January 15, 1931 in Krásné Březno, one of the local parts of Ústí nad Labem. He comes from a mixed marriage, his father was German and his mother Czech. At the time he was growing up, most of the inhabitants of Ústí nad Labem were of German origin, and after Adolf Hitler came to power, a large part of them were beaten to nationalist sentiments. They demanded the annexation of the city to the Empire, which also happened in the autumn of 1938. František Pollak recalls the marches of the Heinleins before the signing of the Munich Agreement, as well as the eviction of a part of the Czech population after its adoption. He witnessed the Nazis begin to set up labor camps for prisoners of war and forced laborers in Ústí over the following years. Both numerous groups performed work in Ústí nad Labem factories, which produced weapons and ammunition for the German Wehrmacht during the war. He also recalls the consequences of air raids by American and English bombers, when a large part of the city remained in ruins and hundreds of people died. His other memories relate to post-war events, specifically the explosion of an ammunition depot in Krásné Březno. The explosion occurred on July 31, 1945, during which many houses in the area were destroyed, including the Pollak family‘s apartment and a shop. Above all, however, it became a signal to unleash unprecedented violence against the Germans, which was then also witnessed by fourteen-year-old František. After the war, he graduated from a business school and for many years worked in the Jednota cooperative. In the 1960s, he was convicted of stealing socialist property. He is now retired and lives with his children in Ústí nad Labem.