“I don’t know if the Scout ideals helped me. But they did help me in that I was used to acting fairly, honestly, not to cheat, to tell the truth, to stand by the truth. Well, and like I said, that caused trouble in my life, my career. I was never able to do the things I’d like to do in medicine, but I didn’t regret it. I felt content that I hadn’t sold myself. God knows, a number of my colleagues did. The director of the hospital told me as well: ‘Look, fill in this Party application form, and you’ll get this and this.’ And I said no. That’s what I consider to be a Scout’s upbringing. I guess that’s how Scouting influenced me, that I kept a straight course.”
“Say, I didn’t find out about my closest colleague until after the war, that is, that he cooperated with me. All I know is what my brother did, for example; he made maps of defensive positions. When the Germans started to fall back, they dug trenches around Ostrava, they built a defence line, and my brother mapped it, he drew it on to special maps, which he passed on to someone, I don’t know who, I don’t know where it went. My task was to distribute packages of medical aid because one of my uncle’s was a pharmacist in Frýdlant nad Ostravicí. Well, so I’d come to him and say: ‘Uncle, look, I need this and this.’ He didn’t bat an eyelid and packed me a load of it. This was split up into small parcels, and some of them I gave to the younger boys, who were going somewhere on their Sunday trip, and they were to stash the parcel there. I myself carried parcels like that to Chladná Voda. There was a shack there that served as a forest school kitchen, which the Scouts had established before the war; there was a cellar there, dug into the slope, overgrown. I’d put the parcel into the cellar and leave. So I don’t know who picked it up there, where it went, and so on.”
“They arrested Milan Rotter, that was one afternoon in Vítkovice, he was out with a girl; the Gestapo left her alone. They shoved Milan Rotter into a car. The girl immediately started phoning everyone she knew, that Milan had been arrested. Some saw this as an extremely dangerous situation and quickly made themselves scarce. Others underestimated the danger and stayed at home. The Gestapo plucked them up in the night and the early morning of the following day. Hard to say why they stayed at home. But I know that they were informed that Milan Rotter was arrested. Well, and as far as I was concerned, as soon as I heard about it, I left home. I waited out the night in the club room, and first thing in the morning I say on my bike and rode into the Beskids. I had a tent canvas, one blanket, and I pitched camp in the Beskid Mountains. I was lucky to be supplied by my friend Zora Skalická, who brought me food to Chladná Voda. I spent the night in Chladná Voda two or three times, but otherwise I slept in feeding racks, which were lined with hay. Then there was one hunter’s lodge on the slopes of Mount Lysá, which doesn’t exist any more. I knew a trick to open the shutters, so I would sleep there and so on. When things calmed down, that is, when I knew that those ones are arrested and the Gestapo isn’t hunting for anyone else, I made an appearance in Frýdlant, where I was sustained by my uncle. But I kept myself scarce during the day.”
Jaroslav Rozsypal was born on 15 April 1926 in Ostrava. He and his brother Miloš joined the 1st Scout Troop led by Vladimír Čermák, who was executed by the Nazis in April 1945 together with other Scouts from northern Moravia. The members of this troop were active in the resistance during World War II. The witness distributed medical materials to partisans and people hiding in the Beskid Mountains. From April 1945 until the liberation of Ostrava, he himself hid in the Beskids after hearing that the Germans had arrested his fellow Scout Milan Rotter. It was not until after the liberation that Jaroslav Rozsypal found out that a number of his friends had been executed. He was accepted to the Faculty of Medicine in Brno in 1948. He is one of the founders of the cairn at Ivančena in the Beskids, which commemorates the Scouts who were killed. Until his retirement he worked as a regional assessment doctor in Ostrava. His job consisted of assessing whether people were entitled to a disability pension and whether they were fit to work in the heavy industry. This brought him into conflict with Communist functionaries. For example, he was the one to decide whether the dissident Jaromír Šavrda was entitled to a disability pension. He himself never joined the Communist Party, and he tried to uphold the principles of Scouting his whole life.
