English Translation

Copy Introductory speech at the demonstration of the prisoners of war in front of representatives of the Czech press on 30 September 1943, gentlemen! You probably heard on the radio yesterday evening the search message, which is to be searched for the sister of a Czech from the former Poland, who is to stay in Brno. The mentioned Czech - it is the auxiliary engineer Jiří Šmolik - has been without news from his sister since 1939. He had been deported to Siberia after the occupation of East Poland by the Bolsheviks and could not be taken up until the spring of this year by the German Wehrmacht in the East. With this, your Czech compatriot, I can introduce you today. Before, however, you will probably be interested in the question of how it came about that the German Wehrmacht met the Czech Jiří Šmolik in the Osteh. Because the fate of Šmonik is only part of a bigger event with which I am allowed to familiarize you today, Šmolik was killed in a battle on the 8th of August. He was captured by a German tank division in the Kharkov area on March 8, 1943, as he was part of a military formation that first appeared on the Eastern Front that day, the so-called "Chechoslovak military unit in the Soviet Union". In March 1943, some information was made available to you. The first news of the existence of such a "Czechoslovak military unit" was received by the Czech channel London on July 18, 1941. At that time it was reported that Jan Masaryk, who is known to call himself "Chechoslovak Foreign Minister", signed a treaty with the Soviet Union together with the soviet ambassador Maisky, who, among other things, had signed an agreement with the Soviet Union. "that Czechoslovak subjects living in the territory of the Soviet Union should unite into military units under Russian command,