Jiřina Muziková

"It had a terrible effect on the man. It was horrible when the guards in uniform were moving around you, I said I wasn't sure if someone was going to stab me in the back. One time we were driving from there and a lady was driving - No, we weren't driving from there, we were in Dubí with my husband to get porcelain, we were buying blue onion. We were on the train and a lady and her husband were on the train, and she was talking... We were talking about something and a man was sitting next to her husband and he said, 'Yes, I know what it is, lady, I've been locked up for eight years.' And I said, 'Well, my dad was eleven.' They were fed there, they had a good time! And I said: 'Jesus, you didn't go there? They would have liked to keep you there too. To try how nice they were.' And her husband tells her to keep her mouth shut and not to talk. People had the wrong idea about that. Some people didn't even know the labour camps existed." - "Was it possible not to know about it at the time?" - "I get the impression not. But claim it. I explained to them what it was like. I said, "You should look at it, it's still there." Barbed wire everywhere, meanwhile the sand was done, more barbed wire, and there were these guard towers, and if anybody came near it, they would shoot. And anybody who wanted to die couldn't take it anymore, well, he went and those wires were filled with electricity, so it killed him. It was a bad time, but the worst part of it is that it was our people, that's what bothered me the most. And people like that... They were people who were completely stupid. You know, it was also a time that paid for positions and not for work. People who worked like mules were not well paid, but people who had positions were well paid. And then you could wonder why people didn't like it. Well, how could they like it."

"So, I don't know if I told you about how one of the guards went after him and just wanted to shoot him. He was always saying, 'If I kill you - I can shoot you and nothing will happen to me because I'll say it was in self-defense.' Dad said, 'You're right, you can do it.'And then the other one seemed to side with my dad. And when this one had some time off, I don't know what it was, the other one - they were transferring a vehicle full of prisoners to another camp - so he was the last one to be put there. He got away, so he didn't see the guy who was gonna kill him there. My dad was at Bytiz and Vojna, those were the names of the labour camps. There were also buses in Pribram, they had the names of those camps, people knew when they wrote to them and got permits to visit. That was for ten minutes. And people used to come from as far away as Slovakia, for example. For ten minutes to see their... It was terrible. And Aunt Sladkova, who was hiding those Frenchmen since the assassination of Heydrich, came with us. And she had a son who was locked up there with my dad. And she let her mouth drop on the train, and apparently it was the guard, because my mother and I were sitting opposite my aunt, and he was sitting next to my aunt, and I saw that he had a gun. So I was winking at my aunt, and there was nothing I could do, he was looking at me. And when he wasn't looking, I'd tell her to keep quiet. No, she didn't. My aunt was going on, she was cursing the Bolsheviks, she was being rude, we wanted to silence her, but we couldn't."

"I remember the end of the war, it was something, because Mrs Tvarohová was chased after. She had a son who was in the Gestapo. She used to wear a cape, and whoever was arrested or expelled, she would rob those apartments and bring it home. So they raided her because she wanted to disappear. So they caught her, and they caught her son. Now that May 1945, it was raining, the elderberries were blooming, they were starting to bloom, some of it was beautiful, some of it was tragic. My uncle was the first chairman of the National Committee after the war. He went to get my father and he said, 'Franta, come to my place, come and see something.' There was a room in the town hall that was covered to the top with letters that were denunciations, so my father read a few more letters. I was in my room studying and I heard him telling my mother. That was so many denunciations of people. For example, the wife, because she found a lover, denounced her husband. Someone hid a sack of grain, so they denounced him. It was just horrible. He said, "What am I going to do about it?" Dad said, "Hey, Franta, it's raining, make fire, and throw it in the stove. Because the mayor was finishing and the mayor was catching it all and he didn't want to send it to the people, to the Gestapo. So there it was in that room, my uncle got it after the mayor, so it was all, my dad helped him, and they burned it. If the Gestapo got it, half of Sadsky was dead. Then together with my dad they arrested the boy, he still wanted to marry me. His mother used to embroider too. But somehow she didn't get along with her husband, so she filed a denunciation against him. And then she complained, after the [May] Revolution, that her husband was executed in Dresden. But she didn't say that she filed a denunciation against him. And my father just got it in his hand and read it."

"But yeah, there were some funny moments and there were some tough moments, that's true. Because every war has some good and some bad, but war usually has little of the good. Yeah, well. You know, the worst part of this was that the Germans did this to us, but what happened afterwards, our people did that to us. And that makes it all the sadder. My dad always, I said, he sees forty years ahead. And when the war was over, my mother said - my stepmother: 'At last it will be calm, Franta, at last everything is over.' Dad then: 'No, no, girl. The worse awaits us.´ Mother: 'Don't be silly, you're trying the wolf again! No, we would survive another war, but not another liberation .And he was right.'