Milos Stefanek, b. 1922, Decin, Bohemia, Czech Republic. Immigrated to Australia 1948.

“I was 17 when Germany occupied Czechoslovakia and my friend Mirek Smisek was two years younger. We declared our own war against the Nazis. We distributed patriotic poems under people’s front doors, we threw rocks through the windows of the Gestapo headquarters in Lysa, we cut the field-telephone wires of the Germans.

Milos & Mirek arriving in Sydney, 1948            Milos & Mirek today

They sent us to a forced labour factory in Ternitz, Austria. That was our great opportunity to escape into Switzerland and, hopefully, into England. We planned to cross on foot and we spent a whole night in the snow, at times knee-deep, trying to cross through the Alps. But just before dawn, we were arrested by German border guards.

We were in prison for three months, being interrogated by the Gestapo. Then we were transported to a prison camp called Kislau. Kislau was the worst camp ever; we thought that if we survived this we could survive anything. It was full of Germans - social democrats, communists, anti-Nazis; some of them had been there for 10 years. We were issued shoes with wooden soles that were impossible to bend and straps that cut into your feet; we were sent out to weed the fields, walking like robots.

For the evening meal we used to get five little potatoes in their jackets - no butter, no nothing. One day, Mirek said to me: ‘Isn’t it your birthday today?’ I realised it was my 21st birthday, so later on during the meal I took two of these potatoes and hid them in my pockets. I thought, ‘We will celebrate when we get back into the dormitory, we will have a little party and eat one each.’ That evening Mirek came into the dormitory and announced, ‘Well, it’s your birthday - we will have a party,’ and he pulled out of his pocket two potatoes.

Now, we were right on the line of survival - to save one potato, in a situation where your life might depend on half a potato, you are really sacrificing your life. That was an act of incredible friendship by Mirek. So we swapped our potatoes, and ate them in celebration of a wonderful 21st birthday.”

After surviving his imprisonment in Nazi labour camps, Milos and his friend Mirek returned home, only to flee communism and emigrate to Australia in 1948. Today Milos is a retired hydrographer, living in Sydney with his wife Judy. Mirek is a potter, living in New Zealand.

This is an excerpt from an article written by Richard Guilliat which first appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend magazine on November 6, 1999. Milos Stefanek’s autobiography will be published shortly. To read a expanded version of his story online, visit www.kuringgai.net/peace.htm