They Took Hostages
In the beginning of May 1945, Vilém Kantor, a member of partisan group Rodina, participated in the liberation fights in the village of Šebešťánová. The Germans fortified themselves in the local cemetery and they took some inhabitants of the village hostage: “They took women and children and some men, locked them up in a barn opposite to the Jewish cemetery and said that if someone tried shooting at them, they would set the barn on fire.” One of the younger partisans decided to free the hostages and he paid for it with his life: “He ran to the barn, opened the gate and at that moment, he was shot in his head.” This act of bravery contributed to the final defeat of the Germans. Among the partisans participating in the liberation were also Soviets. Vilém Kantor recalls that they were taking revenge on the captured Germans: “It was plain butchery. The Russians were taking revenge on them and killing them like if they were rams.”
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Vilém Kantor
Vilém Kantor was born in 1926 in Svederník, near Žilina. His parents were Moravian and they moved to Slovakia for work. After the separation of Slovakia in 1939, they became foreigners in a state that was an ally of Germany. The family was often a subject of insults and oppression from members of the Hlinka Guard. In August 1944, the Slovak National Uprising began and when it was suppressed, the fighters fled to the woods and continued in guerrilla war. Vilém Kantor joined the partisans as a supplier and informer in the area around Papradná in the Javorníky mountain range. He got into several shooting incidents with German soldiers. After the war, he went to Malé Karlovice in Moravia and later to Stará Ves near Rýmařov. Shortly after the Communist coup d'état, he was drafted into the army. During his army service, he passed a political course in Brno. In the army, he was a tutor in political matters for his unit, as well as the official of the Communist Party. He was released for health reasons after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. He recovered and graduated from forestry school. He worked as a forester in Přebuz at the German border, where he was also heading the local municipality. He remembers when the local German inhabitants smuggled goods to Eastern Germany. Later, he worked as a forester in Karlovice and in Třemešek, where he lives today with his wife Marie.
