Trains Heading for the Unknown
Allow us to share with you the life story of a man who began being interested in public matters at a very early age. Considering the time when he began taking his fi rst journalistic steps, i.e. the period of Nazi occupation, it is quite clear that the life and adventures of Miloslav Moulis are more than dramatic.
Miloslav was born in Prague, on April 30, 1921, where he lived with his parents for 3 years after which they all moved to Pilsen. His father,Josef Moulis, a Russian legionnaire, graduated from law faculty and his mother Filoména (nee Novotná), a housewife, died in 1939. After leaving basic school (1932) Miloslav studied at a grammar school until May 29, 1940, when he was arrested by the Gestapo. The reason for this arrest was his membership in the student group of the National Movement of Working Youth. He was interrogated in Pilsen and in 1941 was transported to prison in Ebrach, Germany, where he awaited his trial. He was given a sentence of 2.5 years imprisonment for preparing treasonous acts. One interesting fact is that during Christmas 1942 he was released by mistake, but 3 months later, on May 15, he was arrested by the Gestapo for the second time, then transported to Pankrác, Prague and after three days to the Small Fortress in Terezín.
Miloslav stayed in Terezín for almost three months working in a clothes sorting room, where bags of civilian clothes were delivered every day. In time he found out these were garments of prisoners killed in Mauthausen. From Terezín he was transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Upon his arrival he was “branded” with the tattooed number 118266. As he recollects today he didn’t fi nd it strange that the camp was so “little”, that there were a “mere” 20,000 prisoners. The other 100,000 were no longer living. But he realised the shattering truth. He would probably not get out of there alive, mainly when on his arrival he had to pay 15 marks for his own urn, which was to have been sent to his relatives after his cremation. With the help of Czech prisoners – doctors, Miloslav was assigned to the work of “an orderly”, but mostly he was just carrying away the dead. After 4 months he was transported to the Buchenwald camp, where he worked as a “disinfector”, fumigating prisoners’ civilian clothes.
On Apr. 11, 1945 the Americans arrived at Buchenwald. Miloslav recollects how one of the cellmates somehow got a car and took them fi rst to Cheb and on May 6, 1945 fi nally to his home in Pilsen. There he met one by one his brothers, aunt and her daughter who lived in the Moulis’s flat.
In September 1945 he passed the fi nal examination and enrolled in a law faculty. However, since he was more interested in journalism than in law, he left the school and started work. In his professional career Miloslav was involved mainly in history. First he was employed with the Pilsen editorial offi ce of IS Bulletin, which was published in Czech and translated into English for American soldiers. Later he worked in the Institute of History of Czechoslovak Communist Party and from 1971 in the Antifascist Fighters’ Association, today’s Czech Association of Freedom Fighters. In 1966 he was even selected by the then general, later to be President, Ludvík Svoboda for the preparation of his memoirs. He was a deputy editor of the Voice of Revolution (today’s National Liberation), for many years he was engaged in the Buchenwald Camp Committee and wrote a total of 14 books.
In 1948 Miloslav married Ludmila Černocká and they had two children Eva and Milan, four grandchildren, Tomáš, Markéta, Terezka and Tomáš and also two great-grandchildren, Lucinka and the youngest of the Moulis family – one-year old Michal.
Luděk Sládek
Nesouhlas se zpracováním Vašich osobních údajů byl zaznamenán.
Váš záznam bude z databáze Vydavatelstvím KAM po Česku s.r.o. vymazán neprodleně, nejpozději však v zákonné lhůtě.
