Escape from Czech Communism, March 1948, by Ilja Richard Gregor

From MemoryArchive

Who: Ilja Richard Gregor
What: JOURNEY TO FREEDOM
When: Early 1948
Where: Czechoslovakia

Kolínec is the small village in the low lands east of the Šumava mountain range. There was one pub in the village, one grocery store, and one butcher. The butcher was Karel Krása’s cousin. He was a young man of our age, intelligent, married. His parents were living close by in another house. Karel, who had the nickname Kodl, and his wife Jiina were accommodated in his house while I, Míla, and little Ilja got a lovely bedroom at his parents' house. We ate break-fast with the family, but we did not want to impose on our hosts, so we ate our noon and evening meals in the pub. We planned to get ourselves into good physical shape for the crossing of the mountain ridge. We walked several miles every day. I would put little Ilja in my backpack and carry him through the thicket of the woods getting him ready for the difficult passage through the forest.

On the 10th of March 1948, the news came from Prague that the body of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jan Masaryk, had been found on the pavement in the courtyard of the ernín Palace where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was located, and also his apartment was there. His body was found under the window of his apartment. The official word was that he had committed suicide. There were theories that he was pushed out of the window by communists when he was preparing to leave the country to go overseas. Personally, I felt that the official version was correct because after his visit to Sezimovo Ústí where he met with President Beneš at his summer home, he realized that he was to a great extent responsible for the communist takeover by not resigning. If he would have resigned, the majority of the ministers in the government would have had to resign, and that would have toppled the government, President Beneš would have dissolved the National Assembly, and elections would have taken place in a short period of time. Carrying this burden of his responsibility he probably took his own life.

In the evening we were listening to the BBC from London. We learned that the delegate of the Czechoslovak Republic to the United Nations, Dr. Jan Papánek, delivered an emotional speech to the assembly denouncing the communist takeover and resigned. Also the Ambassador to Washington, Dr. Juraj Slavík, resigned as well as the Ambassador to the Canadian government in Toronto, František Nmec, submitted his resignation. The spark plug of the Czech National Council during the Prague's revolution, Dr. Josef Kotrlý, the General Counsel in Toronto, also resigned.

In the meantime, the cousin owned a small pick up truck 1½ ton and had a permit to enter zone around the borders which was 10 miles wide, and reserved only to locals, tried to find a way how to get us across the borders. I wanted to got to elezná Ruda, the German translation Eisenstein to see the mayor of elezná Ruda whom I had met early in 1946 when I went there with my friend Zdenk Salzmann, Otto Buriánek and Emil Ludvík. Emil was a staff member of the office of President Beneš at that time and because of his function he was treated like a king by the mayor of elezná Ruda.

In 1946 we stayed at the house of a priest, Pavel Janeek who was the priest in a very lovely old church in elezná Ruda. In the meantime he was transferred to a village about 30 km from elezná Ruda. I had no permit to enter elezná Ruda but I risked it. I bought a train ticket to elezná Ruda and took my little boy with me. As I was travelling with a child, nobody bothered me and I entered elezná Ruda with no difficulty. I went to see the mayor. When we met, the poor man was bewildered. Not only was he deposed from his position by the Action Committee of the Communist party, but his 14 year old son left the family and ran across the border to the American zone of Germany. He had no way of offering my any suggestion, could give me no help to cross the border. So the trip did not bring us any results. Later we visited Pavel Janeek at his new home in the village of …….. When we arrived he was not home, only his sister was there. We waited for him on the lawn behind his house “fara,” and little Ilja enjoyed picking wild raspberries. When Pavel came in about one hour later, he embraced all of us quite warmly. He was one of the few catholic priests whom I kept in high esteem. He was devoted to his job, served mass on Sunday in three different churches, visited sick parishioners and helped wherever he could. He had a difficult time under the communist regime, which considered religion a cancer of the mind. He lived a righteous life and did his best for his people. He also was of no help to us regarding a possibility of crossing the border.

Finally the cousin came up with a detailed plan. He made contact with a sawmill owner about four miles from the border where he should take us in his pickup truck. The saw mill owner again made contact with one of the anti-communist guards who was willing to lead us to the border. The stage was set for Tuesday, February 23rd, 1948.

On that day we bought tickets at the railroad station for Prague so that everybody knew we bought tickets to Prague ad left for Prague. We wanted to make the impression hat we returned home. However, we got out of the train the very next station and walked on the road in a southern direction. The cousin came with the pickup truck covered by straw. The cousin drove the truck directly to the sawmill. The women were without make up, wore babushkas, had to look like peasant women. ON the way in the prohibited zone, we were stopped once for identification by the gendarmerie. The cousin knew a lot of people and probably also these policemen and they let us drive further. Míla was scared but did not show it, was talking and playing with little Ilja as if the stop by the police did not concern her.

We were very close to the sawmill when suddenly the driver stopped the pickup. He got out of the cab and whispered to us: “Lie still, don't move.” We didn't know what was going on. Later we found out. As he was approaching the sawmill, the dirt road was going through a ravine. On top of the ravine two boarder guards were walking and could get a clean view on us lying on the floor of the pickup. He stopped the truck before entering the ravine and started to tighten up the spark plugs. The gendarms came to the truck and asked what was wrong with the truck. He told them that he had some misfiring of the engine, and he did not know what was wrong, so he was tightening the plugs. He went back to the cab, started the engine and everything was fine. He put the capote down, jumped in the seat and took off. That was the closest I had to 15 years in prison.

He drove the truck into the barn, went outside, looked around and saw two guards walking on the horizon. He let us leave the truck, and we went inside the house. He introduced us to a very nice couple. They took us upstairs to their bedroom and asked us to stay there. We were there no longer then ten minutes when we heard voices downstairs. Those two border guards had come in for a visit. The couple invited them for a cup of coffee. Upstairs we were afraid to breathe and luckily Ilja was quiet. In about a half an hour the border guards left. We were told that we should be leaving their house after 8 p.m. when the young border guard by name Kohoutek would have come in.

They gave us something to eat but I was not hungry. It was ten minutes after 8 p.m. when the soldier came in. He was a nice looking man in his late twenties. He brought with him a huge German shepherd. Iljouek liked the dog very much, and the dog licked his face. He patted the brute. We gave Iljouek a sleeping pill (an aspirin with a little milk). We put is in his mouth, but Ilja spit it out, and the German shepherd ate the pill. We gave Ilja another one, and that one stayed in.

The young man, our leader, said that the night was good because his companions ate and settled down to a card game. He had a rifle with him and was prepared to shoot and then escape with us if necessary. It was about 8:30 at night when we started our journey to freedom. By that time little Ilja was sound asleep. I wrapped him in a blanket and put him over my right shoulder. We were walking single file around a thick spruce forest. There was meadow on our left. The moon was full. In the moonlight the crystals of the hoarfrost on the grass glittered like thousands of diamonds. Nobody talked. We walked and walked. After about half a mile we entered the forest. We started to climb, everything was going fine, until we came to a ravine where the stones were wet and slippery. I slipped, fell on my knees, and little Ilja rolled off my shoulder to the ground. From the impact on the ground he woke up and started to cry. His voice carried at least a mile. Everybody panicked. We tried to calm him down and we succeeded. I carried him in my arms now telling him stories about three pigs and Little Red Ridding hood. Suddenly he told me he wanted his mother. Míla had to carry him and tell him stores. He was heavy over 30 lbs.). In a short time Míla was quite exhausted. Again I took him and carried him and again after a short while he wanted his mother. Míla was quite exhausted, she told me he wanted to sit down and rest. She said: “Why don't you leave me here and go alone with Ilja?” I told her: “I cannot leave you here, you have to get up and walk.” We started to walk. There as snow on the ground. We had to cross 150 yards of snow covered grounds. The snow was frozen on the top. After a few steps, as I walked with Ilja, the crust broke and my leg went down on foot deep. Slowly I pulled the leg out and after three steps again the surface broke under my foot. I was sweating. The sweat was running down my body to my belly button. I could not bear my winter coat any more. I took it off and hung it on the branch of a spruce tree. It was a new coat and lovely one. The walk was quite an ordeal. The Krásas said that they had a hard time to carry themselves and would not relieve us carrying little Ilja not even for a few steps.

On the right side we saw a barren surface on the peak of the Lysá Mountain. The forest was mixed - fir, spruce, and pine. We were quite exhausted. Little Ilja wanted to be only with his mother. Sometimes I had to push them up the mountain, it was hard to make a step. Míla aid that she could sleep walking and understood her mother's stories of the soldiers from the First World War and how they were marching and sleeping at the same time. We had two compasses with us ad lost one, and we walked without a trail through the forest and that was very difficult. We were wondering why little Ilja was crying when his father carried him in a backpack. The reason was that his legs were cold as they were sticking out of the backpack.

Finally at midnight we reached the border. The border are marked by square granite stones. On one side of the stone is an inscription SR which means Czechoslovak Republic. On the other side the marking is DR which reads Deutsche Reich. Ilja was sleeping, we still walked at least 300 yards to be sure we were in Germany, there under some trees we sat on the snow, put little Ilja down on the moss and took a deep breath. We had made it. Our guide's dog was sleeping also. After he ate the sleeping pill which Ilja spit out, the big brute was snoring even while walking the last two miles. Finally he found a place where he could lie down and close his eyes in peace.

I gave all the Czech money I had to our guide, it was no good for me to use in Germany, no conversion possible. I gave him over 5,000 crowns. He did not want to take, but I said to him: “Look, you have done lot of good for us, and we greatly appreciate what you have done. So take it, and enjoy it.” He took it, saluted and left. He was one of the finest human beings our country had at that time. Some people were guiding escapees for a lot of money, and there were cases that the escapees were murdered for their possessions and left in the forest.

We put little Ilja in the blanket. Now for the first time, Kodl was holding one side of the blanket, I held the other and we went down the slope to Bavaria. There were stumps on the slope, raspberry bushed, and small trees. We walked about a thousand yards down the hill and found the dirt road, which was used by the lumberjacks. We followed the dirt road down the hill until we came to a crossing where we noticed a paper sign attached to the tree. I read the paper. It was in German: “Anordung.” - some kind of regulation written in German. That assured us that we were really in Germany.

We walked about three miles more until we reached a village. A pub was still open, the lights were on and people were playing cards inside. We were very thirsty. I had some German money. We walked in, put Ilja on a table in his blanket and ordered hot tea. We asked them where the railroad station was and they gave us directions. After we finished our tea, we followed their directions and came to the railroad station. The waiting room was open and it was warm inside. The temperature outside was below freezing. We were exhausted and tired. Nobody was in the waiting room and the stove was hot. We sprawled on the wooden benches and fell asleep.

GERMANY - FROM CZECH BORDER TO WIESBADEN We woke up shortly after 5 a.m. People were arriving in the waiting to take the first train going in the direction of Regensburg. I washed my face in the station's wash vasin, combed my hair and went to the window to ask the man where the nearest American station was. I explained to him that we were political refugees from Czechoslovakia and that we would like to contact the Americans. He said to take the train and get out at the third station and go to the gasthof in the center of the village where the CIC station was located. We did not need to pay for the transportation. We arrived to the village shortly after 6 a.m. and walked to the gasthof (restaurant). A gasthof is a place where the owner offers a few rooms to transients and also serve food. They were just cleaning. We told them that we wanted to see the American officer. They informed us that he would come between 10:30 and 11:00 a.m. I asked them for a room because we had slept only 3 hours. The lady obliged an gave us a room on the second floor. It was a large room with 3 beds and a sofa. We were tired and slept.

Around 11:00 a.m. somebody knocked on the door and woke us up. We could not see the CIC officer. I went downstairs with Kodl to see him. He was a young man in his thirties, a slim guy. He did not speak any German but it did not matter because I could speak English. The interrogation took about one hour. He told us to travel to Regensburg to Göthe Schüle. He provided us with a travel order for the train for all five of us and I asked him whether we could get something to eat. He said that we could eat in that Gasthof's Restaurant and take an early afternoon train. The meal was lousy, the soup was made from black bread with a few carrots floating in it. I ate it because I felt that I had to do something for my stomach, Míla did not touch it at all. While we were being interrogated the girls went for a walk in the village and got some milk for little Ilja. He was happy with his milk bottle.

Míla felt sore all over, it seemed like her back muscles were swollen. She had carried little Ilja most of the way in her arms and overstretched her muscles crossing the border. After I had fallen with Ilja and lost my glasses, he wanted only his mother. It seemed to me that my nerves gave up during our ordeal crossing the border most of the time bush whacking. At times none of us could make another step we were so tired. And the fear hung above us that we could be caught, tortured and jailed.

We took the train to Regensburg and arrived there in the afternoon. We asked for directions to Göthe Schüle and found the gray building. It was a high school converted into a collection camp. A German was sitting downstairs. He took our names and told us to go upstairs and find a cot for ourselves. He said that a meal would be served in the evening at 6:30 p.m. The room was large. There were quite a few refugees there already. We located five cots next to one another, we carried very little with us and waited for the evening meal. The floor in the room was a parquet floor sealed with oil like all floors at that time in the schools. Ilja who still preferred running on all four got his hands completely black and his pants and clothes dirty. Míla wanted to wash his hands but there was no soap available. She washed and rubbed his hands to get them seemingly clean. It was nerve wracking to see a child dirty and not to be able to clean him. The meal was some kind of a stew, again a lousy meal and Míla did not touch it. I told her if she would not eat that she would starve. The first night we slept on those cots. We were still tired and slept fairly well. Next morning a mini bus came and took us to the main CIC stationing Regensburg.

There I complained to the officer that the accommodations were below par - the water from the toilets was running down the hall and stairs - and asked him for a better room. I told him that I was educated at Penn State and was a General Secretary of the American Institute the largest pro-American organization in Czechoslovakia. He obliged and gave for all five of us accommodation a small hotel. This was much better than the Göthe Schüle. He told us that at noon a minibus would come and take us to the dining room at the CIC station where we could eat a decent meal. At the dining room we met ten or twelve people. I still recall a few names amount them a general of the Czech Intelligence Moravec who had already escaped twice: once when the Germans came in and now when the communists usurped power. He laughed about it and said that by now he was used to it. The second man, who later became friend, as Josef Josten. Josten emigrated to England and later became very active and published a very interesting private newspaper and was working hard for the “Unjustly Persecuted!”

Because I was working for the KD Engineering Works, I was questioned quite heavily by the officers of CIC about every detail of KD operations: production, program in every single plant, management, etc. We stayed in Regensburg five days. Then on the fifth day we were supposed to go to a camp. I mentioned to the office that Mr. Bruins, Chancellor of the American Embassy in Prague had instructed me to go to Frankfurt to see Mr. Offi at the IG building where the military government for the American zone was sitting. He gave us a travel order by train to Frankfurt.

We found ourselves on the train also with the Jelínek family. Engineer Jelínek was a very important forestry official controlling the Šumava forest working in Pilsen. He came in exile with the help of his people with his son in law, daughter and two children, a boy and a girl. All ten of us took a train to Frankfurt travelling first class.

We arrived in Frankfurt late in the evening. We had no place to go. We left the girls and the Jelíneks in the waiting room reserved for military and allied personnel and went across the street to a hotel where we found a CIC sergeant. He was on duty. I told him that we were ten, seven adults and three children and needed overnight accommodations. That was over his head. He did not have the authority to make any decision of this sort. He asked me to go with him to see the captain who was living outside Frankfurt in a villa and we drove there in a jeep with the sergeant. In the meantime Kodl returned to the waiting room at the station where the girls got ice cream cones from a GI. That was very nice of him.

We woke the captain who was already in bed. It was after 10 p.m. He dressed and drove back to Frankfurt with us. He made several phone calls and then a minibus came in loaded all ten of us and drove us outside Frankfurt to Bad Hamburg to a lovely motel. We got a nice room with a bathtub and shower. After several days without a shower I really enjoyed this luxury as we all did. We slept well. We made a bed for little Ilja in a drawer and he liked it. It was his own bed again.

I was told that there was a minibus going twice a day to Frankfurt to the IG Farben Military Headquarters and that I could take the bus free. We had breakfast in the hotel but we did not have money. I took the bus and went to Frankfurt. I asked for Mr. Offie and was ushered into his panelled office. He was a stocky man in his early fifties. I introduced myself to him and asked him to call Mr. Bruins in Prague. He did so and the two gentlemen were talking in a code language of which I did not understand a single word. After the phone call terminated he told me that I got the clearance and should tell it to everybody. I also told him that I was supposed to see Major Katek, a former military attach to Prague's embassy. He made a couple of phone calls and Mr. Katek came in, shook my hands, smiled and gave me US$65 of my money which he had taken for me in Prague. If we were caught with American money in Czechoslovakia while crossing the border, there was a stiff penalty for the possession of foreign currency up to 15 years of hard labor! So I was very grateful to him. I couldn't use the green backs because the money used in the American zone by the Americans was a script money. I had to change the dollars into script money in order to use them. I did so and returned back to Bad Homburg. Now, we had a little money to eat but of course to feed ten people with $65 it wouldn't last too long. After the first meal, even if the meals were not expensive, half of the money was gone. We realized we could not continue like that. We ordered two meals for four people, then one meal for four but the money was disappearing. The Jelíneks decided to go to a camp. I did not want to go to a camp. I wanted to get a job and stay outside of the camp and find out how to get out of Germany to the United States or Canada. I remembered my friend the Warrant Officer whom I had entertained in Prague when he was conducting the Air Force orchestra from Weisbaden about a month before, Victor Molzer. I called him in Wiesbaden and he was quite surprised to hear my voice. Immediately, the same evening he came to the hotel with his wife Virginia. He invited us to a dinner at the Rhine Main air base south of Frankfurt. Little Ilja did not got with us. That night he stayed with the Jelínek family who babysat for him. We went to the Thine Main air base and entered the dining room. We were hungry, we had not eaten much for several days.

There was a smorgasbord table where everybody could pick whatever he wanted to eat. There were many goodies. We were ashamed to load our plate while we were amazed that the tiny Virginia put a heap of food on her plat. When we wanted to go for seconds, the German help already cleaned the big table of food and took it every night in the kitchen to eat it themselves. Anyhow, we had a wonderful evening and a good meal. When they brought us back, the Molzers suggested that there was a possibility in Wiesbaden of getting accommodations with the Director of Intelligence, Colonel Bentley, who was taking care of Czech airmen who were serving with Royal Air Force in England and who had escaped from Czechoslovakia with their British or Czech wives. Victor took Krásas and us to his home, we stayed with them until we found a place to live. This offer was extremely nice of Victor Molzer. Virginia had a young daughter form her marriage who stayed with her girlfriend so we five could fit in their apartment in Wiesbaden. The Molzers bred German dachshunds and their bitch had a litter of six puppies. They already were old enough to run around and little Ilja was very delighted with the puppies. For the first time he had an experience with little dogs. The bitch accepted him. It was very unusual to find him sleeping with the six puppies and the bitch guarding him.

Victor Molzer called Colonel Bentley and made an appointment to see him. Both couples went to see Colonel Bentlley and his wife Barbara. Colonel Bentlley was Director of Intelligence for the Air Force, which had its headquarters in Wiesbaden. The Krásas impressed him with the concentration tatoos on their arms. I spoke for them because they did not speak any English. Colonel Bentley suggested that he could provide us with lodging in the gardener's house on the property where he lived in Rommel's villa on Rösslerstrasse No. 22 and that the next day he would put some military cots and lockers in the small house and that we could stay there till we could find a possibility for further emigration. We were very grateful to him. Next day we settled at the gardener's house of former Marshal Rommel's villa in Wiesbaden.