A Few Steps from Hitler
From 1942 until the end of the war, Karel Fořt oversaw forced labour in a factory of Hermann Göring in Linz. He started working there as an ordinary labourer, but was soon transferred to administrative work. Beside managing others, he ran a book of reports and dates. In 1944, Hitler and a film crew came to the factory and somebody had the idea to film above the book of reports. “I had to unlock the office and intuitively stood in the corner and he came with that group. There were cameras, but I did not even have to raise my hand and say Heil Hitler. I saw him up close. He seemed to me like a man who possibly knew it is over. He looked like sphinx, did not say a word. Several German women who were still working there came to him after his arrival and kissed his boots. The filming was primarily for propaganda to encourage people to still work and fight,” Fořt recalled.
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Monsignor Karel Fořt
Catholic priest and editor of Radio Free Europe Monsignor Karel Fořt was born on November 8th, 1921 in Rožmitál pod Třemšínem. He spent his childhood in Vodňany and Horažďovice. He studied at a grammar school in Strakonice and in České Budějovice. During the war, in 1940, he was arrested by the Gestapo and briefly imprisoned. In 1941 he entered the Catholic seminary. The following year he was taken to Linz for conscripted labour, where he also met Adolf Hitler face to face. After the war he finished studying theology, and in 1948 was ordained a priest. He served in the parish of Vimperk and visited abandoned parishes in the Šumava Mountains. In the very last moment he was warned that the StB planned to arrest him and involve him in a fabricated trial for a murder case. He escaped over the border on a motorcycle. Later he served as a priest in Algeria, where he experienced the anti-French uprising and war. He eventually settled in Munich, where he conducted holy masses for Czech expatriates and worked as an editor for Radio Free Europe. At present he lives alternately in Munich and České Budějovice.
