Volunteering in a detention camp

In the days that followed the liberation of Plzeň, Oldřich Babka and friends helped to maintain order as volunteers in a detention camp for Germans set up by the US Army in Plzeň’s Karlov. The US military gathered disarmed Nazi soldiers and many civilians in a fenced area with empty wooden houses left after workers. The US military also registered them and assigned them for further transport. The situation in the camp was chaotic especially in the early days. Oldřich and his friends took turns on duty and tried to maintain order and protect women in daytime and night time. “Sadly, there were rape attempts and it was difficult to police. However, there never was any shooting of Germans as retribution,” Oldřich Babka describes one of the reasons behind his volunteering as an unpaid guard in the camp, which took several days during the chaotic period when the numbers of Germans arriving were peaking.