Lieutenant Václav Hrdlička

“In our town, there lived several hundreds of Jews and Poles and about six Czech families. The Jewish population made up the majority. When the Germans came, they put all the Jews into a ghetto that was formed about six months after the arrival of the Germans. In the ghetto, the Jews were left to wait for their death. There was a gorge nearby the town. They took them there and stripped them off their clothes. Then they took them into another part of the gorge and shot them there. About a thousand people were killed there, including little children. They managed to kill them all within three to four hours. Recently, I went to the place, I think it was in 1990 or 1996. The bones can still be seen in the gorge. They stick out of the ground. It has to be because of the rain. Some of the victims fell into the river. I saw these executions with my own eyes. People from the town went to the place out of curiosity to see what was happening. They didn’t know what the Germans had planned. I didn’t believe they would really shoot them. I thought they just wanted to rob them of all they had. Then I saw the shootings. I saw my friends, my teacher and our neighbors being shot. They were stripped naked and then they were dead.”

“You can hardly imagine how tired we were. Once, I fell asleep and only woke up after 24 hours. When I woke up I was all covered with mud and dirt and I had no idea where I was. My unit had long been gone, it had marched forward and they simply left me behind. The only thing I had with me was a radio device and a set of headphones. I had no clue how I got there or how it happened. Something must have exploded while I was asleep and covered me with earth. But I was unharmed.”

“I felt real pity for them. I saw the Polish army and I saw the Russian army. Compared to the Poles, the Russian soldiers were beggars. Can you imagine that the Russian soldiers didn’t know what an apple was? It was in the autumn and we were selling them apples. They were cooking their food in buckets that seemed more fit for pigs than for humans. Even my dog wouldn’t eat their food. They were really miserable people. Additionally, they weren’t allowed to leave their garrisons. It must have been like being in a cage. Their coats were thin and they were constantly cold. And their technology? Well, you could hear their tanks rattle from miles away so you always knew they were coming. Anyway, I didn’t see much in the way of technology in their army. It was more like horses and carts.”

“We tried to live our lives so as to serve as an example. We fought for something. We fought so that the generation of today wouldn’t need to suffer hardship. But what do we see today. Crime, hatred, fraud. This doesn’t lead anywhere. This generation is drowning itself. I lived for forty years abroad but I’ve never seen what I see here in Bohemia. We don’t even have a government. If such a tiny country cannot agree on its statehood, then I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel like. I’m not Swedish, nor Czech nor Ukrainian. Although I have Czech citizenship, it’s no god to me because today, all I can do is be ashamed for being a Czech. I deeply regret that I came back.”