Anna Hejpetrová, roz. Beranová

“My name is Anna Hejpetrová, and I was working as a children’s nurse at the clinic in Strakonice. I was born on 20th July, 1936 in Lhota u Svaté Anny in number 10, that’s where our summer house is now. I will tell you a story which is true and which really happened. It was on 20th April 1945, when a so-called death train was passing through Katovice. It was a train carrying people sentenced to executions, and there were allegedly some six hundred fifty prisoners. When the train made a short stop in Katovice, it was attacked by American ground-attack planes. The SS men watching the train ran away and hid, and lot of crying, wailing and pleading was allegedly heard from inside the train cars.”

“There were six young soldiers, I don’t know where they came from. They were young boys. I ran out to the road here, and there were thorny bushes next to it. Unfortunately, it was our people who did it: they cut the shrubs, and they made the young soldiers go there and dance in these thorns. They were crying: ´Mom, mom,´ calling ´Mutter´, their hands clasped, it was nasty. My Mom pulled me away killed several of them like this. I don’t actually know.”

“After a week or ten days of hiding the prisoners, the local police chief ran to us and said: ´Mr. Beran, all the prisoners must leave Lhota, including the ill Frenchman. The field gendarmes, armed German policemen, are coming here. They all need to go away.´ What to do now? The prisoners who were able to walk were guided to the Štěchov forest at night. This was a large forest, today it looks completely different. It had been prepared there – huge boulders, with holes in them, people had probably prepared it beforehand as a hiding place they could use if the war broke out. Thus they hid the prisoners there under the rocks.”

“Our village was also liberated by Americans. I remember it precisely. We had a long cherry-tree alley and they arrived in a jeep, handsome boys in ironed uniforms, and they said something to our Dad. Obviously, he didn’t understand them, and so they took his hand and led him to the biggest cherry-tree and pointed at it. Dad understood that they wanted the cherries. He brought a ladder for them, and they picked cherries into a helmet, and then came to show it to him. They gave us chewing gum and chocolates. We were amazed. My Dad was a smoker, and hey gave him cigarettes. He had American cigarettes, and that was quite a something for the men.”