Milada Kolářová

“They approached, the army, simply, they surrounded it. They approached and herded the neighbours in front of them. They were afraid that [we’d] start shooting. And they had with them Alexandra Panchenko, she was one of the group that had landed with Kiš, and the Germans had captured her immediately, right on the spot they had. So they had her captive so that she could recognise Kiš. So they pushed her ahead in front of them. Well, and we, my parents when they saw her and saw what was happening, they went out and Panchenko asked: ‘Is Kiš here?’ Mum and Dad said: ‘No.’ You could see the enormous relief on her face. We met her later on in Terezín. And so then, when they knew that Kiš wasn’t there, they weren’t afraid any more they tore into the yard, tied Dad to the walnut tree, stood us women facing the wall, and the soldiers began looting. All sorts of things all over the place, and then they said the captive should come out of hiding. So we had to undo the cover and tell Afanas that everything was lost and that he can’t shoot, because it’s unimaginable, impossible. So he came out, they captured him and calmly took him with them to the car. They didn’t do anything to him. He just didn’t mean anything to them, he was just a captive.”

“But then Bohouš was arrested near Hradiště. It came I don’t know where from, somewhere from the mountains from the partisans there. He was betrayed, he was at the Gestapo. He didn’t tell them anything, nothing about where Kiš was. The Germans already knew about Kiš. But he told them nothing, they put him in the cooler, he suffered terribly, awfully. And when they were at their wits’ end, they put him in a cell, and with him they planted the former Czechoslovak officer Navara from Česká Třebová, who was also imprisoned and couldn’t take any more of it, and so to help himself and ease the pain, he got it all out of Bohouš.”

“Unfortunately, we were betrayed and Bohouš was arrested by the Gestapo, that was under the occupation. But before that, before they arrested him, Bohouš used to come to Mýtka to kill the pigs when we had a slaughter. Illegally of course. Mum and Dad always managed to fatten a hog in secret, and from what was left, well, I can’t really say ‘left’... They gave at least half of it to people in the towns, because people there had it rough. And when one time during a slaughter Bohouš complained that he did not have enough food for the people and that they didn’t have where to hide anymore, Mum told her brother: ‘Well then, Bohouš, when you find out about someone like that, send him here.’ And so Bohouš brought us the paratrooper Kiš and the Russian captive Afanasiy Koropka.”