Eliška Mišunová

“They came to my father and ordered him to display a German flag immediately. We had a beautiful cherry tree in front of the station building, and they threatened that if he did not swear on the flag, they would hang him on that cherry tree. At first they were beating him, dragging him on the ground, and then walking him through the village in chains, because they remembered that there was some Czech working as a postman, and therefore they decided to take dad all the way to the post office. They dragged him to the post office building and ordered him to go in and make the Czech postman walk out. Dad came there and said: ´Karel, come, we got to go.´ The man said: ´I will not go.´ There were two Czech soldiers, there, too, some guards. Obviously, they immediately escaped from the post office through the back door. This Mr. Mroček said to dad: ´Franta, lie down under the window there, we got to save ourselves somehow.´ But it was of no use, and then, probably because they were unarmed and they could not hurt anybody, they walked out and the Germans began beating them again. One German got killed during that. But, as dad said, it was them who shot him. They didn’t even notice that they shot him, because dad and the postman had no weapons, and they thus would even be able to shoot him. This made the Germans terribly furious, and the news of the incident reached the school in Kobylá, where certain Mr. Tauc was the principal. He learnt what was happening, and as dad later said, he ran to the post office and started arguing with these German Freikorps members. They had to stop and let dad and the postman get medical aid. They were all covered in blood and badly beaten, and this school principal had them transported to the hospital in Frývaldov. This teacher actually saved their lives. Father was then sent from Frývaldov to the hospital for railway workers in Olomouc, and the postman was sent to Ostrava.”

“They fired him from work and he was then traveling in the area, serving at those little train stations when other employees were absent or on holiday. Then he served in Jindřichov, and one man, who had been placed there by the police because he came from the same village as my husband, came there. He came to him and said: ´Franta, wouldn’t you join us? See, I got a weapon, I got pamphlets. I’ll give you a pamphlet, go and distribute it somewhere.´ My husband replied: ´Get out, and leave me alone.´ There were two other people in the office, the assistant and the dispatcher, and my husband grabbed those pamphlets and threw them in the stove immediately, with these two men watching as witnesses. But it didn’t matter, because the man who had brought them joined the communists. And they knew it. He had been set on my husband; who knows what they had promised him for that.”

“He was all covered in plaster cast. It was terrible. I cannot forget it. I can still see it in front of my eyes. I remember that we waited for him when he was about to be released from hospital, when he then began walking again. In Drahotuše, where we lived right opposite the railway track, and all we could see from him was the plaster. His face and hands all in plaster, beaten up terribly. I cannot forget it.”

“We decided to move back. My husband was successful in a job interview for a position in the train station in Frývaldov, because it was to be staffed by Czech employees, and he was a railway employee in Vsetín, where he was in charge of the cargo cash desk. So it was clear that we would move back. We received a flat here, and my parents in Kobylá. And the Germans started returning thing that they had stolen. They were bringing them to us. My mom said: ´It was horrible for me when the Germans came.´ Somebody brought back only scales a pair of scales; our parents had a beautiful painting which they were very proud of, and the people returned it to them. My parents didn’t own many things. It was not a time when people would have many things at once. But the German people did bring it back. When my parents were walking through the village, the Germans would greet them: ´Topry ten.´ (Good morning in Czech with German accent – transl´s note). They wanted to say hello to them. They were greeting them, shaking hands with them. I don’t know, actually.”