Josef Petrů

"My mother was at home with us and the Germans came to the yard and asked her to call the children. We went out and the street was already full of children. And the Germans were pointing us to move on. Above our cottage was a larger peasant house. And they drove us all into that barracks. A soldier stepped to the door and we were in the living room, the kitchen and the hall. There were at least thirty of us there." - "How did you manage?" - "Of course, we were scared. Then there was a big bang, and some of us started crying. I don't know how I did, but especially the little girls were scared, we were all quite scared because we had never experienced anything like it. From the kitchen window we could see soldiers walking around the barracks where we were closed, led by a commander, with our mayor and the director. They went and stopped, and they went again. Then we saw smoke and flames. There was a log barn covered with thatch, and it started burning first."

"They went to destroy us and reached the ridge and had to go down to the meadow. And from the other village towards Slavičín, the Romanians were already in trenches there. And they started firing the first artillery shells from the cannons. At first, they began to fall into the forest. The Gestapo stopped and returned to Vizovice. It was a matter of less than a day and our village and its people would have been destroyed. No one can explain that… The Russians did not come to us at all. They chased the Romanians in front of them to make the Romanians die first. Then the Russians only came to steal."