Secret Shelter

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During the war, Miroslava Kaštovská and her family – her parents and two siblings, lived in the hamlet Znajka. In November 1944 a seriously wounded commander of the partisan brigade of Jan Žižka D. B. Murzin came to their house. Though they risked a lot when they let him go into their house, she dressed his wounds and her father and the game warden made a shelter for him in a nearby wood. In that time K. H. Frank launched the anti-partisan action code-named Grouse and about thirteen thousand German soldiers began sweeping the woods. The action lasted about a week. During that time it was not possible to go to the shelter to Murzin. The father got ill, probably in part to the psychological stress. Several times the Germans came to the house of Miroslava Kaštovská and went closely around the bunker. Kaštovská states: “They went very close to the shelter with a dog, but did not find him. He prepared a gun and a poison for himself. It was near to our house so we would be the first suspects.” In the meantime Murzin's wound started to fester so he had to take the bullet out of his body on his own --Kaštovská said, “he had a hand mirror, broke it and cut off the bullet with its fragment.” She goes on to say, "when the operation Grouse ended, father started to go to the bunker again and later Murzin was coming to the house to oversleep." The father of Ms Kaštovská, Jindřich Tkáč, was later arrested by Gestapo, (secret Nazi police), for this help and died in prison.

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Miroslava Kaštovská

Miroslava Kaštovská, born Tkáčová, was born in 1931 in the secluded settlement, Znajka, between Čeladná and Horní Bečva. Only the Tkáč family lived in the seclusion amidst the forests of the Beskidy Mountains. Life there had been very hard even before the war broke out. Starting in 1944, guerrillas from the Jan Žižka Brigade began appearing in the neighborhood seeking a place to hide. The partisans would often visit the home of Miroslava and her family. Their house also became the hiding place for the equipment of an airborne landing with the code-name "Wolfram". The family thus lived in great danger because even these secluded places in the mountains were occasionally visited by the Gestapo. Nevertheless, the family helped the paratroopers and their home, for a few weeks, became the hiding place for the severely injured guerrilla-group leader and chief of staff of the Žižka Brigade Dajan Bajanovič Murzin. It was just at the time of Tetřev operation, when 13,000 German troops sealed off the mountain area with the order to break the guerrilla resistance in the area. Murzin could eventually be saved but it cost the life of Miroslava's father, who was arrested by the Gestapo after he had been betrayed by the informer, Emil Muroň. Her father later died in prison and her mother was briefly imprisoned as well. After the war, the family moved away and some time later, the Znajka secluded place ceased to exist. Today Miroslava Kaštovská lives in Opava.

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Znajka

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Obyvatelé této zaniklé osady, která se nacházela v katastru obce Čeladná, na konci války všemožně podporovali členy 1. československé partyzánské brigády Jana Žižky z Trocnova. V listopadu 1944 se zde ukrýval těžce raněný náčelník jejího štábu kapitán Dajan Bajanovič Murzin.

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Secret Shelter

Miroslava Kaštovská