Vladimír Brabec

“And that autumn there was mud, cold rain, it was terribly difficult, people were pretty sick. And then we decided to strike. So the whole Czech bunch - and not only the twenty-fourth year, but also the boys, the twenty-first year, all joined in and we started the day of strike. Everything was upside down. Czechs, they can afford to strike! But we hesitated in the quarters. We discussed it: will we strike, will we stay here in those quarters? Some said, no, they would easily get us here, we would scatter into the forest. I said, that was stupid. They had dogs, and they would let them go. It was best if we lined up and met them. And that's what happened. We create three lines and went towards the factory. We were caught by the Werkšusáci, who went for us again. They took us under guns and dogs, the dogs around us, and we went to the factory. In the factory we were placed in front of the boss's house, the SS officers, not the SA, but the SS, and a senior SS officer. They stood us there, we stopped for a while. Then came the whole patrol, then the boss came and started yelling at us, as we dare striking in the middle of the war, their youth that must be on the front, that many people are dying on the front, and we have such a calm and secure job here. Our life is not endangered and we dare to strike. He scolded and said, 'As a warning, I will hang one of you up in front of the factory.' There was, of course, a deep silence. 'Choose one of you.' Shall we choose? Even deeper silence. 'If you do not choose I will: there,' he pointed to Pepíček. He was the kid from the groupu we used to go to a pub in Magdeburg. He hosted us with the bacon he got from home, from the countryside. And now they wanted to hang him. When he pointed to Pepík I got revolted and started yelling at Colonel SS: 'No need to hang anyone, people need to get better shoes! Are people supposed to walk barefoot in this mud? If we had at least clogs! ' There were no clogs. But we knew the clogs were in the warehouse, even big boots.”

“The first thing we did was building barricades. I was in the group of František Juhan. He had the task of ensuring defence, making the troops inaccessible to the Nazi, Hitler tanks, the way from Štěchovice, where they had a center in Hradisko, to prevent this southern access to Prague. We secured that, but it was very inadequate until the Vlasov army members arrived. The commander of František Juhan was General Bartoš, who lived at the freight station in Smíchov. And he started using me to get in touch with the Vlasovs. I was given the task of bringing the Vlasovs to somewhere to shoot from the guns. They had lighter movable cannons. We went to stand them at the Chuchle church, there to take a position for the possible arrival of tanks from Štěchovice, which really happened, the tanks really went there. But they had arrived at the Chuchle intersection and Vlasovs had opened fire. There was a fire, fortunately it ended so that the Germans, the tanks did not return fire back to the Vlasovs and the church, but turned around and headed back to Štěchovice. So, the task of preventing the arrival of tanks was accomplished. At the same time, we built a barricade with a group of František Juhan and the volunteers who applied for it, mainly from paving stones.”