Remembering the war ------- “I remember World War II, when it started, we worked out that it’s happening, in 1938, I was ten years old. So to begin with, I think that as a child, I didn’t realize what was going on at all. Not until I was older. I remember, say, that we had the ration tickets. Everything was for tickets. So it was difficult to get things. So, we used to have a beautiful garden, but that changed suddenly, we had goats and rabbits. We had pillows with cloth [hidden] inside. There were inspections. So we had to know how to drop it [hide it - ed.]. So we’d trade wool or cloth with the farmers, of course, in change of meat, butter, and so on. Not so much meat, actually, more eggs and butter and the such, honey, for example. Then later on the air raids started. To begin with, the raids were only at night. We had a big wall at the back, we broke it in and also let our neighbours [join in]; it was a matter of life and death, so garden aesthetics be damned, we built a shelter. I attended grammar school at the time, but I’d go home for lunch. But later I’d take a later train to Nezvěstice and I lived at one Mr Vaněk’s in Vlkov. Mr Vaněk had a lot of bees. And because I was there, I had to carry various things home in my satchel - I rode by bike, from Nezvěstice to Vlkov by bike - well, and we also had to smuggle some things... So we’d ride to Nezvěstice, and the [train] conductors, there’d be German soldiers or SS men, they’d be posted at the station to check what people were carrying. There were inspections. And when we were in the train, the conductor would go through the wagons around Šťáhlavy, and he’d say something, but what exactly, I couldn’t say any more, perhaps: ‘Looks like rain,’ but that was a codeword for us: there’ll be inspections. So everyone got out in Koterov and walked. Towards the end of the war there were lots of incendiary bombs. These incendiary bombs were kind of metal, kind of like vinyl, I’d say, they were octagonal or hexagonal, shaped, and it was this kind of tube. Here in the garden, it needed to fall somewhere, and it broke on impact. There was a bomb here beforehand, luckily, that was a time bomb, which has some device in it with the timing, and when that breaks, it doesn’t explode. But that was a horrible feeling, we watched from afar, just in case, and they brought in the political prisoners. And [the prisoners] had to dig it out. Even today I wonder what they must have been thinking, if it exploded they had to dig it out of the ground.”
