Irena Kršková roz. Buržaková

“We lived in the first house on the right along the road to Olomouc, at the crossroads where Buržak lives. They wrote “There are no Germans” on the house. And there, in our kitchen, first there were SS men with radios and they directed the refugees headed for Olomouc. But before that, when I was still at home, there was a death march in February. Russian prisoners of war walked by, some 7,000 of them. With just blankets on their shoulders, in wooden clogs or without socks, they walked past our house in the February frost. My grandma and mum would throw them apples from a window. The house was close to the road. It was... They were just shadows, and it was the worst for those who lay on the carts. If someone fell down, the Nazis just shot them immediately. They have to be buried somewhere around Potštát. So we saw the horrors. For example, a woman gave birth on a cart by our house; they came to us for hot water. The end of the war, you know, and they were all fleeing from the Russians.”

“Our place was a ‘Czech hub’ – those who claimed to be Czechs would meet there, and there were not many of them – Czech women. Some families had German fathers, like ours, so they had gone to war, and some Czech mothers were afraid to say they were Czech. One day, I was walking in the town with my grandmother and I told her, ‘Grandma, please don’t speak Czech’. I still feel sorry for having forbidden my Grandma to do something. The horror of [being] Czech [amidst] the German environment was rooted so deeply in me… But I never told anyone at school what was at home.”

“At the end of the war, we watched the Nazis fleeing on 8 May… We and some self-employed folks would sleep in brewery cellars. There were brewery cellars underneath the pub and there were full-grown chestnut trees above. The Nazis blew up the steel bridge across the Bečva River in Lipník on 8 May, it was at five in the morning, and all the cellar shook; the explosion was so strong and we were so frightened. That was the end of the war on 8 May. We watched the fleeing Nazis and the coming Russians with the trucks and tanks, rolling through Lipník. And there was a big gathering at the square on 8 May to celebrate the liberation of Lipník. I heard the brass bands playing the anthems. And I didn’t realise it was my birthday, my thirteenth birthday on that day. Tears ran from my ears just from hearing the brass band, my beloved brass band that I had heard in pubs since childhood.”

“But I need a teacher. So I nagged my dad for a teacher. He took me to a teacher who taught me to read music in one lesson. These days, children learn for nine years and know nothing, right? Oh well. He taught me one lesson and then went to war. I cried that I needed a teacher again, so dad took me to an accordionist and he taught me to play the bass registers, so I could play with both hands at Christmas – and he went to war too in three weeks’ time. I cried again. Then another teacher taught me for a little longer. I played pieces and etudes and then he went to war. Alas, by then there was next to nobody in Potštát, everybody was in service, yet my father was still at home. Finally he approached an old retired teacher who wouldn’t even hear of a student. ‘I am not teaching anyone anymore!’ ‘But she keeps crying for a teacher back home.’ ‘Okay, bring her then.’ So I took lessons from the old man... He used to be the headmaster and church choirmaster and organ player, and now he was teaching me. He taught me to play the accordion for a year and a half or so. In the end, when the Germans had to leave the country, he gave me a stack of sheet music, with ‘Irene Burschak’ written on it. Under Nazis, we were not allowed to write our family name ‘Buržak’, we had to write it the German way, ‘Burschak’. Well, I would write my name ‘Buržaková’ again right after the war ended.”