English Translation

Rudolf and Humprecht Czerninová from Chudenica's memory and history 2014/04 39 legitimized me and the said wheeler and after finding out the identity and tour of my briefcase she wanted to move away. Meanwhile, he came to this critical place, I don't know for what reason, the gamekeeper Novák. At the same time, the German cars in this space stopped the villa and our identification was found to be in my briefcase, mounted on my bike, and one pistol.44 On the basis of this finding, the Dvo- øák together with Hájný Novák was taken to Hlušice, where the Gestapo carried out a tour of the castle. Here he was to be subjected to the first interrogation using violence: ... the gestapo Horn of the Gestapo of Cologne [...] and the other one abused me for about one hour and asked me to tell them the origin of this weapon, where I had other weapons, whether I agreed to the assassination of Heydrich etc. Then they stopped hitting me and drove me back to Hlušice, where I remained and [was] guarded by the driver [...]. Then they loaded me and Novák, who was also guarded in the Germans, in the car, and together with Horn we were taken to the Gestapo office in Cologne.45 In Cologne on the Gestap he was repeatedly questioned, again were questions about the weapons and approval of the assassination of Heydrich. As Dvořák said: In these interrogations, I was treated fairly well. On the cologne service, he was apparently confronted with Humprech- tem Czernin on 20 June, who was detained in No-vé Bydžov on the evening of June 9th, when he got off the train on his return from Prague, and then brought to Cologne. Czernnin did not know what happened at his home during his absence. The Gestapo told him that there was a nale- zen revolver with him. Although Czernin could not explain how the gun could get into the castle, but perhaps because of fear that he would endanger one of his loved ones, the first evening in question said that the re-volver might belong to him. The next morning however, he withdrew it and tried to explain that the revolver did not belong to it. Since then he remained with this statement.46 On 30. After noon in 1942, both detentions were taken to the Prague Petschkov Palace. There was a martial trial under the presidency of the SS- -Standardtenführer Dr. Hans-Ulrich Geschke, sitting by the government council of Dr. Josef Witisk, Deputy Criminal Commissioner Paul Feustel. Humprecht Ottokar Count Czernin and František Dvořák were sentenced according to § 3 para. 2 the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia of September 27, 1941, in conjunction with the decree of Reich protector of May 27, 1942, about the withdrawal of a civil exceptional condition for unauthorized possession of a weapon to death. The property of Humprecht Czernino was confiscated in behalf of the Empire. Both sentenced on the spot asked for the pardon given to them on the same day by K. H. Frank. Czernin's sentence was changed to life. He served him until September 15, 1944 in the prison in Brandenburg an der Havel. Dvořák was waiting for another fate. The grant of grace was conditional on being surrendered to the Gestapo. After two to three weeks in the jail in Borech to him, allegedly not so influential, a protective custody was imposed and traveled to the Terezín Small Fortress. As early as September 1942, his father reported that his son was doing very well, that he would be released before Christmas.47 Father Dvořák's fiancée knew his former gendarmerie, now translator at Gestapo Wittinge- rem, and received news from him about the potential son-in-law. Dvořák's brother-in-law remembered this event in his 1974 statement: ...I remember very accurately when the father returned from this visit to the Gestapo, that he told him that Wittinger told him this was a difficult case, but that he did not have to worry about Dvoøák coming back soon and that he would be like a partridge. On 4 December 1942 he was really released from Tere-winter. His family tried to intervene in his behalf with the help of their German relatives, namely Marie Sophie's game - Schaffgotsch-Donnersmark, born von Henckel (1896©1972).48 On her initiative, banker Theusnar wrote a letter to his friend, Reich Minister and chief of the Imperial Police to Hans Lammers in July 1943. Theusner asked him if the case, despite the inclination of the Czech nobility to the former Czechoslovak government, was not suitable for pardon. Humprecht Czernin eventually got out of prison another way. On September 15, 1944, he was heavily ill with tuber-culosis transferred to the lung sanato-ria to Pleši. At the railway station in Prague, he was transferred to the sanatorium, where he died in four days. In the patient's income book, there is a record of a relatively young count 49.50 44 © Idea, p. 5©12. From quotations it is not clear whether it was a pistol or a revolver, both expressions alternate. The mother of Mary Sophie, born in 1896 and born in Kostelec nad Orlicí. Her great-grandmother Marie (1806©1872) came from the family of Czernin from Chudenice. 49 In the medical report it was recorded that she lived for two years in inappropriate conditions. He had a short breath, to the evening of fever, last days an irritating cough... ABS, f. 325, sign. 325-113-1, Evaluation, April 26, 1973, p. 21.50 excl. among the family members there was a claim that the prisoners deliberately infected him with TB. Ibid. PD_04_2014.indb 39 15.12.14 9:27