A plank

The secluded place Torfstich-pláně is situated at the very edge of the moors of the Mezilesní slať in the Šumava Mountains. It was here where the family of Franz Pösl, an alleged smuggler of goods and people, had its home. Another source says that he made a living with the production of so-called borky, a sort of peat pellets. Perhaps both sources are true. When, in May 1950, the gendarmes ambushed Kilián, the “King of Šumava” near Františkov, his companions who managed to escape were looking for help in Torfstich. Although it is said that they weren't admitted inside the building, the entire family was subsequently arrested and their house razed to the ground overnight, as the witness Eduard Steun recalls in his narrative for Memory of Nations. Mrs. Květa Pěničková personally met with Mr. Pösl after his release in Nové Hutě, where he settled. He allegedly told her about his arrest: “Franz Pösl lived in the woods, in a secluded place near Zlatá Studna. He had been credited with quite a bit by then already and thus he knew he was in danger. He knew that should they catch somebody, they’d beat it out of them, he knew that he’d exposed to the police. This is exactly what happened and thus they came for him. Knowing that he was an old smuggler, physically fit and courageous, able to outrun them, they devised a ruse. They told him that they had gotten stuck in the forest and that they needed to borrow a plank from him. He brought them some and they said: ‘you’re arrested’.”