„In a village Krosno near Dukla we got dressed in military uniforms. Then we had been waiting in bunkers. For eight days we got no meals. German snipers controlled the area completely. It was impossible to deliver food to our position.“
Michal Bindzar was born on 16th of October in 1922 in Ruske in Carpathian Ruthenia where family had owned a farm. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia Hungarians occupied a part of Carpathian Ruthenia. Therefore Bindzar had to enlist Hungarian army in October 1942. In April 1943 he was transferred to a Russian frontline near Kiev. Bindzar soon defected to the Russian side. But instead of fighting against Germans Bindzar was sent to a prisoner camp in Eastern Ukraine. In the camp he was detained until September 1944, when he enlisted the foreign Czechoslovakian army of Gen. Svoboda. He experienced his first battle in Dukla pass. Later he suffered a leg injury. After he returned form a hospital he served as a military messenger at a company headquarters. He reached Prague with the army via Liptovský Mikuláš - Ostrava - Kolín. After the war he had served a regular military service in the border area near Nitra. Then he moved to Bohemia with his father. After he graduated at a Forester High School in Tábor he found a job in Military Woods in Lazne Kynžvart. Bindzar refused to become a member of The Communist Party so he was fired few years later. Then he found a job of co-driver in State Woods in Plana. Later he became a gamekeeper at the same place. Today he is in retirement. He lives in Mariánské Lázně.
