Alfred Heinisch

“They took us boys and we had to graze cows. There used to be huge pastures behind the Hedva factory and there were many cows there. We had to graze them and then lead them to Harrachov to drink water. Then we had to find women in the town who would come to milk them. This lasted for about a week. We were running all over the town and so they ordered us to come again. They did not punish us, it was not like that. They were taking things from the shops, and we had to help with carrying the goods. They were carrying it to railway cars in the station. This took about two weeks. Then they ordered us to stand in line and asked each of us our name. There were about five or six of us boys. ´What shall we do now? They will make us get on the train and go with them.´ None of us was German. Neither was I. When they asked me, I told them I was Jewish so that they would let us go.”

“The family’s name was Peikert and they had a Ukrainian man as a helper. Ukrainians were being assigned to local farmers. You could send a request to the town’s office and ask for somebody to help with work, because there were no men here. There were only women and kids. This Peikert had a young Ukrainian and it is possible that he may have hit him a few times if the Ukrainian didn’t do what he told him. I did not see it. He was there as a farmhand and nobody treated the farmhands well. This Ukrainian man disappeared right before the end of the war and Peikert was afraid that he would come back for revenge. I was just walking from the farm with my mom and their grandma was running all over the yard of their house looking for this young family, and they were nowhere to be seen. Later I learnt that some Russians came there to help her look for them and they found them in the attic: three kids and the two adults, father and mother. They had hanged themselves. The older boy, Eda, who was my age and who went to school with me, was hanging there, too. They cut him off. They took the three to the hospital. They managed to save Eda. I met him later and he had a red stripe on his neck where they had cut off the rope. The hands of one of the boys were all right, but the youngest boy had his tendons severed and his hand was like this... All three now live in Germany.”

“We boys were in the DJ (Deutsches Jungvolk, ed.’s note). When a transport of people whose houses had been bombed arrived, they called us and we had to accompany them to Stará Ves or to Horní Město. We were ordered to go with them so that they would know how to get there.”