Zdeněk Bartoň

"Then, after the war, it was simply the case that all of a sudden Gestapo confidants, or those adherents who previously collaborated with the Germans, wanted to take revenge on the Czechs and take revenge on those who were not good, so suddenly they became partisans. All of a sudden, they drove out normal people and bullied those people. They had to sweep the square. I will tell you specifically: there were mills and dough factories, and there was a German employed there, whose name was Larisch. He was quite a good German who did no harm to anyone. And those confidants were the first to take him out, of course, they locked him up in Svatobořice. They imprisoned a few people in Svatobořice, who got caught everywhere. They were either partisans or those who could not defend themselves and were imprisoned there. It was that these confidants, if I should call them that, even asked us, or asked the school, to go and see how they would hang them. That is, there was a passage in the town hall, and there was a prison where they imprisoned those who did not turn in enough meat or eggs. These were prisoners who had been there for one or two days. But apart from that, they built a gallows there and hanged those people on that gallows, for example, Larisch in particular. Those from Svatobořice walked on foot and walked past our house, so we saw Mrs. Larischová, the wife of that Larisch, who was crying the whole way. They had to support her, and she had to watch the hanging of her husband."

"Back then, the communists did whatever they wanted. Just exactly what they wanted, and they had power. They had the power to decide as they wanted, so they decided. And you either listened to them or you didn't. Of course, those who had the courage or objected... But you know, me and my family lived with the fact that we had a mortgage with this house, that we had two small children - and now what. So our children won't even get to school, while our girl studied with top grades. So tell her: 'You can't go to school. You can't study high school.' So it was just cruel. So I said, I have to take it upon myself, so I have to risk it. I had no choice. Maybe it was stupid, I don't know, but I had no choice but to join."

"It was in 1945, so on Monday, 16 April, German soldiers blew up two railway bridges and switches. The next day, the Germans brought in new cannons and placed them in various locations on the streets and the outskirts of the city, towards Hodonín. On this day, 17 April, the Germans set fire to the "likusáky", which were wooden buildings at the train station, and began shooting at people who were on the streets. They looted the entire town, smashed shop windows, and doors, stole, and destroyed whatever they came across. The next day, 20 April, grenades started falling on Kyjov. On that night, a grenade hit our shed, and it immediately caught on fire. We all started extinguishing it, but the shed burned down to the ground. So we had to hide in the cellar, where we also slept. There were fourteen of us there. As we came out of the cellar, the Germans immediately started shooting at us. We could only go to the second cellar, which was behind us, but we didn't dare to go any further due to the danger. There were grenades, mines, and constant shooting from all kinds of weapons in our immediate area. The next day, out of curiosity, I climbed onto a bench and looked towards the hospital. As I was getting off the bench, a shot rang out, and a bullet struck nearby. I received a few slaps and scolding from my father, but I didn't climb up there again. When I was falling asleep in the cellar, I heard a noise in the courtyard, footsteps, and immediately after that, bursts from a machine gun, which could be heard now and then. And in the morning, when I went out, I saw a fence that barred our house, full of bullet holes. It was that soldier who was shooting at me. There was always someone appearing in our cellar. It was a German soldier, sometimes a more pleasant Austrian, but, at night, there were also scouts - Russian or Romanian soldiers."

"After the Heydrich rampage, they started arresting people who were suspected of having connections with the partisans or with the resistance in general, with foreign countries. So, for example, Professor Španiel was there, he was locked up there. We have it from him because we communicated with him quite a bit. So there we got, my sister got a simple rose cut out of bone, like a bone. He brought us someone who needed something somewhere. It was a concentration camp, we called it that, but the concentration camp was surrounded by wire, and the guard there was not as tight as, for example, in other concentration camps. So here, for example, the guards were Austrians, and we were in contact with those Austrians. We knew each other, so they turned a blind eye, or they left, yes. Of course, we had to be careful, of course. We knew it only as what we saw over the fence. What they usually wanted from us, they wanted to know something, or they wanted to send something, or some people just came to us and asked: 'Tell us what's up with dad or what's up with mommy' and so on, so we kind of informed them ."

"Kyjov was such a Jewish city. There were, you could say, fifty percent Jews and fifty percent other religions. We were friends with the Jews. We went to school with them. Here, for example, next to the town hall, there was what we called jewtown, and there was a synagogue. Because the Germans seemed to be longing for money, simply for wealth, so they found out that the Jews had a golden calf there. It was stupid, but that's how they found out. Well, they simply raided the synagogue, wrecked it, ruined it, and destroyed everything possible. Their Torahs that were wound up there like on those... so it was damaged, and everything was in a terrible state. Well, we were boys, right, so it was all our neighborhood, so when the Germans left, we went there to visit. They told us: 'Please, we can't get there. Get us some of those Torahs.' Well, we carried it and gave it to them. Then it happened that Jews came here from Holešov, well, in 1940, in 1940 it was or 1941, so then they were dragged off to the concentration camps, to gas. They hid or left their possessions with their families as if they would return. Well, of course, two or three percent of them returned, no more.'