Josef Svoboda

* 1926

  • „[In the cemetery, there are 1376 – ed.] dead people who were buried there, and also many of my friends died. I was lucky that I survived and continued all the way to Prague. There was also fighting near Žilina, but the heaviest fighting was in Liptovský Mikuláš, because they [the Germans - ed.] were counting on that [crossing the front - ed.], so there were good trenches and bunkers there."

  • “I wish there was never war again because people die in war, they just kill and die. But back then the war had to happen because the Germans would have slaughtered almost all European nations. It was necessary.”

  • „[In the village we would always - ed.] hide in some barns or people invited us: ‘Come in.‘ Because many times, we did not fight, just rarely, there were for example attacks at night.” - “And how did local people treat you? Local people?” - “Very well, I do not know. Mostly in Moravia as we walked through there. They treated us really perfectly there. They invited us: ‘Come in, come in.‘”

  • “We met four years later and he said: ‘What are you doing here?‘ When he left, I was fourteen years old. Thinks like that also happened.” - “And did your brother come all the way from Buzuluk?” - “Yes, my brother came all the way from Buzuluk.”

  • “He was led by an escort - twelve police officers and he was in the middle. They brought him in, where the gallows stood. They stopped there and the hangman arrived. He did him something like this and stood him in front of the rope, put it on his neck and that was it. It was announced that he lived for eight more minutes. That was the first and last execution and then also the one of Frank but I did not get the ticket for that one, it already took place in Pankrác.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Trutnov, 04.02.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 01:08:32
  • 2

    Liberec, 05.02.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 29:00
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I saw tens of dead and torn bodies and it was not pleasant

Eighteen-year-old Josef Svoboda in the army
Eighteen-year-old Josef Svoboda in the army
zdroj: Josef Svoboda´s archive

He was born on 9 March 1926 in the village of Nižný Hrušov in Michalovce district in eastern Slovakia to parents Daniel Kukolos and Maria Kukolosová. His father left for Uruguay when he was three years old and for this reason, he grew up with his mum and five years older brother Jan. He (Jan) had to join the Slovak Army in 1941 and he deserted it and joined the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps in Buzuluk. He went through the Battle of the Dukla Pass with it and in Liptovský Mikuláš in February 1945, he met a witness who had joined Svoboda´s army at the end of 1944 in Humenné. He (Josef) served in a mortar company in the 4th Brigade and took part in the fighting at Liptovský Mikuláš and went through other liberation battles in Czechoslovakia. After the war, he was deployed in eastern Slovakia to fight against the Ukrainian rebel army, which was trying to cross into Germany via Czechoslovakia. When he left the army, he worked as a worker in paper mills in Hostinné and mines in Žacléř. He lived in Trutnov at the time of the recording in 2022.