Alena Kovářová

"So there [in the pub at Žatek's] my sister rehearsed the Golden Spinning Wheel, then the Waterman. I remember that I played the virgin. I still remember it all to this day, the poem. And it was always kind of cramped there, so the sets were there, but then as I went to do the laundry by the water, behind the sets there was a washtub of water. So every time I was to fall in that water, we would always [splash] up on the stage. So it was all kind of [happening] there, the chorus was reciting it and me and this other boy had these roles... That's the kind of stuff we rehearsed there. Then we rehearsed Our Furiants here, but that was later, we were taught by Mr. Černý from the Olomouc theatre, so he rehearsed with us. And so I also played Margitka there. My sister always pushed me into the main roles too."

"The commander of the Germans, as they were leaving, came to us, I remember, it was in the evening, almost at night, and my father could speak a little German. An SS man came in, he had these black swastikas. And he had a lot of watch on his hands. And that he wanted to sleep. Let's clear out the rooms, so they can sleep there. The normal soldiers had to be in the laundry or in the barn, and we had to... And he, Daddy, opened the door to the bedroom and said he had so many kids in there that we wouldn't have any place to lie down. The German said he'd lie down on the iron bed then and ordered to bring a bunch of straw on the kitchen floor and two more lay down there and they hung those guns and they hung those hats on that. Well, now all of a sudden before morning behind the fence here behind these little gardens a soldier was coming and he had a sort of [receiver] on his back, I don't know [what] they were, I think they were listening out for how far the front was or something, giving commands like to these men. And I just know that they had the password Dora. He came to the door and opened the door and said, 'Dora, bitte.' So the commanders jumped out and I was thinking, we didn't get shot at the end."