Inspectors from Prague are here

As a former employee of Brno’s Arms Factory, Emil Pupik was arrested and taken to the Kounic Halls of Residence in May 1945 when she was seventeen years old. He tried to escape but was caught by Jundrov and sent back. “For punishment, I had to press a book against the wall with my nose, with hands tied. If I dropped it I was beaten. One day, thirty other Germans and I were looking forward to finally getting something to eat. They cooked something in the cauldron; then we found it was just boiling water with some vegetables. We had to make a circle round the cauldron. We were given cups. They told us to run around quickly. One of us grabbed the boiling water and was supposed to drink. If you didn’t come close they yelled: ‘You bastard, don’t you want to eat?’ Those who tried burned their lips. What came next I don’t know; I fainted. Also, we had to lie on the top of another German’s belly and they would fire close above us. If you lay on someone who was fat you were shot. But the worst thing was when someone figured that the Germans should erect three gallows poles at Kounic. Seven of us built them. Then the wardens chose one of us to hang. Then one warden said they should hang three because there were three gallows poles. I was chosen as the second one and then they chose the third one. They tied our hands behind our backs and put the nooses on our necks. I was standing on an empty beer keg, struggling not to hang myself. They stood by me, I was ready to be hanged, but then someone ran into the yard and shouted: ‘Inspectors from Prague are here!’”