Michal Chumchal

"The worst was when my father was sick and not earning money. He had debts that had to be paid. I didn't want to go to school because I had to wear patched trousers and sweaters and my mother had a hard time with it, it was a cruel time. My father employed my mother's brother Štěpán in our workshop. Then when nationalisation came, my father took some of the machines across the road, where the packing house is today, to my cousin's house and hid them in the barn. When uncle Štěpán, a communist, came the next day and the machines were not in the workshop, he said: 'Jan, put it back immediately or I'll turn you in'. That was the situation in the family too, well, it's not pleasant to remember. Then came the executions on the tradesmen who didn't declare everything, didn't hand it over. The communists did it by collecting the leftovers from the workshops and making these exhibitions. They showed the working people how much the tradesmen had robbed them."

"Then came the liberation of Rožnov. Both my father and my grandfather had war experience, so we, children, were moved to the cellar, where we had a sustenance. My father chose the thickest concrete ceilings possible. In case something happened, to make the ceiling last. There I sat on a washtub and ate cracklings because we had killed a pig earlier. As the Russians advanced from Hutisko and from Solanec, they drove the remnants of the German army ahead of them, most of them Hungarians with horse-drawn carts, supply units, retreating over the hills, through Dolní Paseky to Zubří. One night these Hungarians supposedly slept with us, I don't remember. The next day the Russians came, they stayed with us because they had parked an American Dodge truck in the yard, which the Americans were helping the Russians with, and it was full of stolen goods. We had tenants living with us, and their Zdena was about two years older. They told her to take off her scarf and they put a lot of candy in it. They didn't give me anything that day and I've been saying I don't like them ever since. In the meantime, I was running between the German guns, because that northern area, Bačův vrch, was occupied by the Germans, and the southern side, that's where the Russians were advancing towards Rožnov, they weren't coming directly from Hutisko, but they wanted to get to Rožnov by a bypass. There were shootings, one stray bullet broke a tile on the roof as they tried to shoot their way through Rožnov. When it was over, we moved from the basement to the rooms. One night, a huge bang, my parents caught us and our blankets and we ran to the basement. Then it was discovered that the Germans had blown up the Lower Bridge. They had tried to blow up the Upper Bridge as well, but they put a small charge there, so there was only a hole in the middle of the bridge deck."