Exhibition | Show case 3

Droplet-shaped pendant made by František Hůlka in the Small Fortress Terezín, 1943

Horseshoe-shaped pendant made by František Hůlka in the Small Fortress Terezín, 1943, PT 7246

František Hůlka

František Hůlka was born at Lásnice in the district of Jindřichův Hradec on May 3, 1910. In 1930, he began to earn his living as a taxi driver. Since his trade license was revoked after the Nazi occupation, he found a job as a truck driver in the Prague forwarding company Emil Lode in 1942. On January 28, 1943, he and his co-driver transported material supplies for the workshops in the Terezín Ghetto. As the cargo was being unloaded, Hlinka inconspicuously left his lunch – two slices of bread with meat – on one of the boxes taken down from the truck so that any prisoner could take the food. Unfortunately, the Ghetto commander, then in civilian clothes, saw the incident, immediately detained František Hůlka and handed him over to the gendarmerie on the ground of violating the anti-Jewish laws. Hůlka was kept in the Pankrác Prison in Prague from where he was taken, four times in six weeks, to the Petschke Palace, the Gestapo Headquarters, for interrogations. He was then transported to the Police Prison in Terezín’s Small Fortress on March 19, 1943. In Terezín, he was assigned to work as an electrician in the Workshop Courtyard. Inmates had a slightly easier life in this courtyard; in their free time they could secretly manufacture various objects. That is how the exhibits on display here were made – a droplet-shaped pendant (PT 7245), a small horseshoe-shaped pendant (PT 7246), a pendant bearing the monogram R. B. (PT 7250), and a tobacco box (PT 7253). All these artifacts, with the exception of the tobacco box made jointly with Josef Cikán (b. March 11, 1906), were fashioned by František Hůlka. He then gave them to his fellow prisoner Josef Bernard (b. February 27, 1903). Bernard donated them after the war to the collection of the Terezín Memorial. Luckily, František Hůlka spent only five months in the Small Fortress, being released on August 25, 1943.

Miniature metal cross made by Josef Johánek in the Small Fortress Terezín, 1944–1945, PT 7336

Small Czechoslovak flag made by Josef Johánek in the Small Fortress Terezín, 1944–1945, PT 7340

mall horseshoe with the inscription VÁNOCE (CHRISTMAS) 1944 made by Josef Johánek in the Small Fortress Terezín, 1944, PT 7333

Small white cat made by Josef Johánek in the Small Fortress Terezín, 1944–1945, PT 7327

Small wooden cross made by Josef Johánek in the Small Fortress Terezín, 1944, PT 7334

Josef Johánek

Josef Johánek was born in Prague on December 31, 1902. Between 1923 and 1925, he completed his military service with the First Prague Aviation Regiment. In 1939, he was employed at the Regional School Council in Prague. Through his colleagues he came into contact with Josef Pešek, Chairman of the Union of Teachers’ Associations and member of the resistance organization Petition Committee We Shall Remain Faithful. Pešek got him involved in the anti-Nazi resistance movement. Josef Johánek joined the group, led by Jan Janoušek (1897–1942), which helped people to escape from the Protectorate via Slovakia and Hungary to Yugoslavia. Early in 1940, Josef Johánek, too, decided to flee the country together with three former Czechoslovak Army officers. Their journey led from the south of Moravia to Slovakia, where a local contact first took them to Trnava, and then, after several days in hiding, they continued to Nitra. Captain Vladimír Velecký (1890–1951), known as “Mr. Szabó”, hid them in his flat in Nitra. However, further journey turned out to be impossible as the escape route through the Hungarian territory had been compromised. That was why Josef Johánek was charged with the task of going back to Prague to brief the persons preparing future clandestine escapes about the changed situation. Carrying an encrypted letter from Captain Velecký, Johánek set out on his way back to the Protectorate by himself. Despite minor difficulties, he was able to get to Prague and deliver his report. Back in Prague, Josef Johánek returned to his job in the Regional School Council. Shortly afterward, he was warned that Jan Janoušek, his contact person in the resistance organization, had been arrested and Johánek had thus lost contact with the entire group. He then began to cooperate with the resistance organization Captain Nemo. His duties included duplicating printed matter and gathering intelligence news to be sent abroad. He also served as a messenger and informer for Brigade-General Jaroslav Plass (1895–1961). Gen. Plass was in contact with the Czech diplomat Arnošt Heidrich (1889–1968) from the group Parsifal (originally known as ZAMINI in Resistance), and helped that group get in touch with the underground Sokol organization codenamed Jindra. In the autumn of 1941, Josef Johánek, together with the married couple Helena and Josef Bílek, helped to save Rudolf Volek, member of the Central Headquarters of Domestic Resistance (known under the Czech acronym ÚVOD), whom the Gestapo threatened to arrest for sheltering hostile persons. At that time, Staff Captain Václav Morávek (1904–1942) from the Three Magi resistance group asked Johánek to provide a flat as a suitable place for radio transmissions to London. Josef Johánek was detained by the Gestapo on May 27, 1942 during a crackdown on the members of the Captain Nemo group. He was kept in cell No. 22 in the Prague Pankrác Prison for almost two years. During that time, he was taken to the Petschke Palace for as many as 37 interrogations. On February 29, 1944, he was transported to the Police Prison in Terezín’s Small Fortress; after a time, he was assigned to cell No. 20 in the Workshop Courtyard. And this was where Josef Johánek secretly made the artifacts now kept in the collection of the Terezín Memorial. On display here are the following items: figure of a small cat made of white cloth (PT 7327), a small horseshoe (PT 7333), a wooden and a metal cross (PT 7334, PT 7336), three small hearts (PT 7339), and a small Czechoslovak flag (PT 7340). Some other artifacts are exhibited in the Small Fortress Museum exposition. In addition to different prison workshops, Josef Johánek was also employed in the Small Fortress food warehouse. According to testimonies of his fellow inmates, he always tried to help other prisoners, shared with them latest radio news, sent out secret messages, and, whenever possible, he obtained some extra food for them. Three years had passed since Johánek’s arrest and he was brought before the Berlin People’s Court of Justice, sitting in Litoměřice on April 4, 1945. He was sentenced to seven years in penitentiary for conspiring to commit high treason. Yet, he was not sent to any other repressive facility, staying in the Small Fortress in Terezín until the end of WWII. Before the war ended, he contracted spotted fever which was spreading fast in the Fortress. He fought this insidious disease for ten days. Then, still quite enfeebled, he started his new postwar job at the District National Committee in Litoměřice as a representative of former prisoners on May 16, 1945.

Stanislav Šmolík

Stanislav Šmolík was born on June 25, 1906 in Libušín near Kladno to father Alois and mother Anežka (née Loukotová). After finishing his school attendance, he worked as a tinsmith to earn his living. At a young age, he was exposed to communist ideology and he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1925. Shortly after the Nazi occupation of the Czech lands in March 1939, the German security forces launched a mass arrest operation against leftist-oriented citizens, German émigrés and Jews. Codenamed Aktion Gitter (Action Bars), this police crackdown also hit the Kladno region, where many communists were detained. Another wave of reprisals came in June 1939 after the shooting of Wilhelm Kniest, chief constable of the German Order Police. His death triggered off a renewed spate of arrests, since the culprit could not be captured for a long time. These two clampdowns paralyzed the entire underground resistance network in the region, including the Kladno district committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Stanislav Šmolík was actively involved in the subsequent revival of the anti-Nazi network. He had the advantage of being relatively unknown to many people in Kladno, as he had moved into the district only in 1938. He received assistance from the newly appointed regional secretary of the Communist Party, Ladislav Ševčík (1908–1943) from Ostrava, cover name Šrámek, who was hiding in Šmolík´s flat for some time. The reconstructed underground communist resistance group then focused primarily on publishing leaflets, distributing the communist newspaper Rudé právo and organizing money collections for the families of arrested members.

Stanislav Šmolík was as a member of the Kladno district committee of the underground Communist Party of Czechoslovakia until a random house search. Even though this incident had ended without any consequences for Šmolík himself, he was recalled, on conspiracy grounds, and served instead as a messenger for the organization. Gestapo agent Jan Vacek denounced most of the members of the party’s district committee at the end of April 1940. After their arrest, Ludvík Kuna, one of the detained, gave away Šmolík’s name under brutal questioning. The Gestapo arrested Stanislav Šmolík on May 6, and he then spent over a year in custody in the Zwickau and Dresden prisons. In September 1941, the Higher Land Court sentenced him for comprising to commit high treason. Šmolík began serving his three-and-a-half-year sentence in Waldheim but he contracted tuberculosis, and had to be transferred in September 1943 to the Mírov Prison in Moravia, reserved for inmates suffering from lung diseases. He was expected to be released in February 1944 but, just as many other inmates, he stayed in jail. This was followed by his transfer to Prague-Pankrác and then, at the end of March, he was sent to the Gestapo Police Prison in the Small Fortress in Terezín. Being a skilled and experienced tinsmith and plumber, Stanislav Šmolík was assigned to cell No. 23 in the Workshop Court in the Small Fortress. The inmates imprisoned in this section enjoyed somewhat better conditions, as most of them served in workshops which offered certain benefits and advantages. Šmolík repaired various things, e.g. kitchen utensils or watering cans, and he allegedly made a child pedal car, an order from the prison commander Heinrich Jöckel (1899–1946). In his free time, Šmolík was able to make different smaller objects. One such artifact was a preserved pocketknife with an engraved decorated stem with petals and a blossom on one side of its copper handle, and the inscription “Terezín 1944” on the other. Kept under the inventory number PT 6152, this knife was eventually donated to the collection of the Terezín Memorial by Stanislav Šmolík’s fellow inmate, varnisher František Morávek. Early in 1944, Stanislav Šmolík was sent to the Flossenbürg concentration camp with an accompanying note “return undesirable”. Due to his bad health he had avoided being sent on a death march, and was liberated by the US Army, together with the rest of the inmates, on April 23, 1945. He could return home only after a one-month quarantine. He returned to Bohemia on May 28 and for several months kept recovering from his diseases and hardships caused by incarceration. Partially recovered, Stanislav Šmolík was able to return to normal life in Kladno by the end of 1945.