The Main Thing Was Not To Boast

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At turn of the years 1943 and 1944 Jan Lorenz became a member of intelligence brigade. His task was to gather information from people of his group and pass them on to London via a secret radion. “In one of the news I informed London that in the Kbely airport the Germans have a lot of airliners, no air fighters and a few antiaircraft guns.” According to Mr Lorenz´s words the Gestapo never revealed the intelligence service. It was important not to let slip anything. But sometimes it was very difficult not to boast. “Accidentaly I was in Petřín and saw several airplanes, the mustangs, who came to bomb the airport in Kbely. I was extremely pleased and I remembered it was us who reported about the situation in there. I knew we were not the only ones, but I was standing there and imagined tha I contributed to that. Of course, I did not have any confirmation, but the desire to tell the other people who were standing around a watching it was almost insuperable.” A lot of years after the war Mr Lorenz met one of the pilots who flew over Czechoslovakia during the war. And that pilot confirmed to him that the news they got from the occupied areas were very valuable for them.

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Leslie Comstock
2018-12-17 06:34:00: This is my grandfather

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Jan Lorenz

Jan Lorenz was born October 13th 1924 in Prague. He grew up in the Smíchov neighbourhood, and he attended an elementary school in Malá Strana. He also attended the Sokol sports club in Malá Strana, and he participated in the Sokol national meetings in 1932 and 1938. The majority of his friends, however, came from a water-scouts´ club, of which he was also a devoted member and with which he was going on trips, descending Czech rivers. His co-workers in the resistance movement in the Intelligence brigade were then also mostly former scout members. He was organizing transmission of reports from his friends, which he was then handing over to his messenger. In May 1945 Jan Lorenz took part in the Prague Uprising, but he was not involved in direct combat. In 1945 he began studying at the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University, but he was dismissed for political reasons in 1949. In January 1950 in the Domažlice region together with his friend from the boy scouts he crossed the border over to Bavaria. In Germany he arranged his emigration to Australia, and in December 1950 he then sailed to Sydney. In 1955 he resettled to San Francisco in the United States. He was working as a technical engineer; was living in California and Kentucky. After 1990 he returned to Czechoslovakia, and now lives in Prague in the Malvazinky neighbourhood.

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Prague, Kbely

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The area on the border of Kbely, Letňany and Vysočany was selected as suitable for an airport in November 1918. Air traffic started there in December of the same year. Hangers and other buildings were built in the subsequent years. The airport’s landmark – the Maják (“Lighthouse”) water tower – was completed in 1928. Three regiments of the Czechoslovak Air Force formed there at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. In March 1939, the airport in Kbely and its equipment including aircraft was occupied and confiscated by the Nazi army. The Nazis turned the airport into a repair plant. The field in Kbely serves as a military airport to this day.

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The Main Thing Was Not To Boast

Jan Lorenz