Bruno Brych

"After the liberation, when the Soviet troops liberated the area here, then in September I started going to the Czech school in the second grade and I did not know a word of Czech. I looked and didn't know what to do. With Dad there was sometimes some Czech, but Mum could not speak it at all. That's how she taught me Czech, even though she didn't know it herself, that's how it looked. So there were problems, the German was so much fixed there. Gradually it changed, sometimes the children laughed at me that I was reading a sentences incorrectly, it was a train, simple 'v' in German 'f', so it was still there. Well, then I got out of it, I went upstairs and the breaking point came in fifth grade."

"There were a lot of prisoners in Mimon. They were English, Russian, French, most of them were in fact Russians and French. And they were employed in various jobs in Mimon. ´You'll do it, you'll dig like the yellow vests here.´ That's what the convicts did, and then they always locked them up somewhere in the evening. And there was one who rode with a upholstery in town with horses and they needed horseshoes. So Dad came, he did these little things on the sidewalk outside on the road normally. The horse was very restless, and he said: 'It's dangerous for a blacksmith to be kicked and killed by a horse.' So he said: 'Look, Ivan, get up here.' And Grandpa held the horse's leg, and Dad forged. A stubborn SS man went there and said… I'll say it, I'm sorry, as it was said, 'Why is that Russian swine standing here on the sidewalk and you work for him here?' And Dad said: ´He is no swine, but just a man as any other. And the point here is that the horse could kill someone, because they are very restless.' The result was that Dad went digging anti-tank trenches in Poland for saying that."