Secret Lists of the Dead

In 1932 father of František Suchý won the open competition for the position of the director of crematorium in Prague-Strašnice and he and his family moved there. František Suchý remembers only the worst things from the war: “The casualties from the execution places Kobylisy and Pankrác were burnt there. My father often woke me up in the middle of the night and I had to write the names of casualties who had been executed only a few hours ago.” His father had to register the names of the casualties and hand these lists over to the occupants. But secretly he mad copies. He was supposed to fill the compost up with the ash, but he used to save the real remains. During the war about 2200 people were buried in the so-called third night shift. “When I came to the cremator in the morning, sometimes there was so much blood that I could wade through it. Those were people, whose heads had been cut off and they were still bleeding.” According to Mr Suchý the heads of the Heydrich´s assassins were burnt there too. After February 1948 they brought the dead to the crematorium again. This time those were the casualties of the communist regime. The urns were stored anonymously to the common grave; the relatives could not come to the ceremonials or take over the urns. František Suchý held the urn of Milada Horáková in his own hands. Again his father hid the ash of some people and risked his and his family´s lives. When František Suchý saw how they burry more and more bodies of the casualties, he decided to get involved in the resistance movement against the Communists.