Cyril Evans

"I don´t know how long he was in the cinema but definitely in the Ruta mill he was between February and May 1945. He was well looked after and a great risk to the family. One time a group of Germans came looking after escaped prisoners of war, they came to the house and my father was sitting at the table. They had pretended he was deaf and dumb and working in the mill. And the way Josef Ruta managed to get rid of the Germans was to offer the officer some fresh eggs. The German officer took the fresh eggs and they went. But the risk they went through was incredible, which is why I´ve spent so long trying to find both Ruta and Pravda family to thank them. Thanking isn´t enough, it can never be enough. But it has been an incredible few days now, being able to meet with the descendants of both families and going to the graves of the original Ruta family and the Pravda. I´ve been able to pay my respects that way."

"I know the story that they were going up to the farmhouses listening by the door. Obviously during the time in the captivity with the Germans they had learnt some German words. So they went by the doors to see whether the families were German or Czech, Czechoslovakian. They went to one door, I assume it was Josef Ruta´s door, but I am not 100% certain. They knocked at the door, they thought it was Czechoslovakian people in there. The person came to the door and could not understand them. They didn´t know what to do really. But Eric, the British sailor, had a tatoo on his arm of the Union Jack, the UK flag. He lifted his shirt and showed that they were British. And they called them in to the house and hid them and got other people involved in the hiding and everything. It was a risk. Also for my father and Eric, they didn´t know where they were, some Czechoslovakian people were kind of on the German side. But they were lucky that they found this amazing, kind, brave people."