Karel Matuška

"When the war came, the Russians came to us and moved us out. They told us we couldn't be there. That there would be a general there. The general was really there. There was a guard in front of the house. But then when they moved away, they took everything away from us. Dad was a musician. He had a harmonica in the basement, a trumpet, a clarinet. He played in a band. [We also had a radio. They took it all away from us. The closets were left open and empty. They took everything. The album was left there torn] and a few pictures were left. Other than that, there were no clothes left. All that was left was what we were wearing. After the war, everybody threw away the shirts that the Hitler Youth wore during Germany. That HJ. They were brown shirts with buttons. My mother cut off the buttons and threw them away. She washed the shirts, sewed on other buttons and we wore them. So we'd have something." - "And what was on the original buttons?" - "They had the letters HJ or DJ on them. The girls wore DJ and the boys wore HJ. It was called hajot and dejot. That's what the girls had."

"They used to sit on the bench and talk. Most of the guys talked about the army, how they had it there. Then when World War II started, that was also such an event... Everybody was dragged into the war. But my uncle Čecháček from Šilheřovice, who married a sister of my mother, he worked in the mine. He said that everybody would come back from the war and tell stories and he wouldn't have any stories. Then he was drafted anyway and died in Russia. So he didn't tell any more stories after that."