They Became Numbers

Vojmír Srdečny, a student of Institute for Education professors of physical education, was transferred by the Germans to the military quarters in Ruzyně, two days after he participated in the funeral of Jan Opletal on November 15, 1939. He and many other students got an excessively cruel punishment: “The welcome at Ruzyně was not very pleasant because it was a bleak day and we had to walk. The road was covered with mud so sometimes they said to one of the groups ‛Hinlegen!’ and one of us had to lie on the ground and the others walked on his back. I know that the coat I was wearing was muddy and wet even the next day when we travelled by train.” Only foreign students and students up to the age of twenty could leave Ruzyně. The others then became a number who they were given on a string. The next day they walked from the barracks to the railway station wherefrom they continued by train. They did not think it was going to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.