Věra Jenčková

"There we arrived at the customs office, where we were checked in. It took an awfully long time because they did a complete search of our car. We had a Škoda MB 1000 car at the time and the spare tyre was hidden under the boot and we had shoes and everything near the tyre. We had it wrapped in newspaper and it hadn't occured to me that you weren't allowed to carry any printed material. They unpacked everything, but they were also reaching into our pockets. They had eaten there earlier and they had butter in their pockets and he reached in and pulled out his hand all covered in butter. Then we threw the butter away. Then when I went to customs to get the paper, they gave me a map where there was one red line. There was no village, just Lvov and Rovno, but nothing else. He just said, 'Zdes vaša doroga.' [There is your road]. That was the only thing. So we just drove along that red line. All the bridges there were guarded on one side and on the other. In the heat, in those nettle coats reaching their ankles, with a riffle over the shoulder. It wasn't a pretty sight."

"Was there any indication that something was going to happen?" - "Yes, you there was, because when he invited a militia chief to see us, the first thing he did was to give us a newspaper when he arrived. I didn't speak Ukrainian and didn't know what the words meant. So I gave it to my aunt and she said, 'Girl, it's terrible in your country. They are hanging people on lamp posts in your country. In your country will be a war, big war.‘ So I cried first of all, because we had two children here. We were there a total of eleven days and we were supoposed to be there thirty days."