Růžena Grubrová

“My father and my two uncles slaughtered some cattle. They buried the skin in the forest. However, the postman who was coming here saw them and he turned them in. There was a large peat bog here close to the weather observation station, and we would go there to make so called borka out of the peat, which we then used for heating. That day we were riding there with a cow wagon to dig some peat. They arrested dad there and took him to the police station in Stachy. It was on November 1st 1942. My sister was just one year old and I was eight. In the morning they brought him back home to change clothes. He had been so beaten and bruised everywhere that we could not recognize him. He got sentenced to fourteen months. One of the uncles was acquitted, but the other one was sentenced to two years in prison. Later they transported him somewhere to Germany and he died there.”

“We were liberated by the Americans here. Their commander was certain Mr. Myslivec, whose mother came from Klatovy. They were sitting here in the dining hall, my mom was cooking Czech meals for them and they were so happy. In exchange they were bringing us their rations, for example their excellent canned food. They hated to leave. Mr. Myslivec wanted to take my four-year-old sister with him. He was childless and he wanted my parents to give her to him. But she was daddy’s sweetheart, and nothing happened.”

“My husband was a gamekeeper. Sometime in 1988 or 1987, still under the totalitarian regime, there was a bark beetle plague. We were helping them process the wood. It first had to be sprayed before it was taken out of the forest. But there was no water and we needed to fetch the water from behind the wire fence. The border guards went with us and we were not allowed to say a single word. We drew some water and walked back. It was a terrible feeling when you saw the wire fence, and the soldiers. Terrible.”

“Many people here were guiding other people over the border. They would bring the people from Prague to Zadov, for example, and somebody would then take them over the border. But the repercussions then affected everyone. They thought that my father was involved in it as well since he was using horses for work in the forest. They were coming to see him all the time. They claimed that he surely must have guided somebody over, that he must have been involved in something. He was not. Still, one day they drove him off to Vimperk. There they interrogated him for the whole day and then they made him walk back home. Father came home totally exhausted, with only a little bit of strength left. There were others in Kvilda, too. They watched him daily in the forest.”