“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.”
“I was taking my admission exams, all subjects in one day, but it was 1968 and we were all in shock. Mum came running in the morning; a Russian tank aimed its gun at her when she was walking to work to Kovářov for five in the morning. My God – what could the old woman do against the gun? So she came running home, scared, and I had been learning since four, preparing for the tests, which I was to take on 31 August. She says: ‘We’ve got visitors.’ And I say: ‘What train did they come on?’ I had been expecting my German cousin to arrive about midnight, for two nights. ‘Well, it’s not Hilda – Russians are here.’ So, shocked, I didn’t want to take the exams. But then I thought that we were all in shock, the teachers included. So I took the exams and passed.”
Irena Kršková was born in Hlinsko in the Přerov District on 8 May 1932. Her mother was Czech, her father German and they spoke Czech at home. The witness went to the Czech school in Hlinsko in September 1938 but in October she had to leave for a German school in Potštát due to an ordinance; her family moved there. The father was drafted to the Russian front as an interpreter and the mother got sick with tuberculosis. The three children were provided a German governess but since she spoke German to them, the mother arranged for the children‘s Czech grandmother to take care of them. The mother‘s brother provided shelter to guerrillas. At the end of the war, Irena Kršková witnessed a death march of Russian POW. The father was a POW after the war and the family first received news about him in late 1945. He was not expelled but his social status was difficult. The witness had been learning to play the piano since the war. After the war, she studied the Modern Language Institute for one year and then left for the Teaching Department of the Olomouc Music School. She taught music at Art Schools in Uničov, Olomouc, Hranice and Potštát. She married archivist and historian Ivan Krška in 1970. She fostered her deceased sister‘s children. Irena Kršková invented musical education aids and is still teaching.
