Anna Pokorná

“We give away our lives in parts, we do not know how much there is left, only sometimes the time reminds us that it is getting late, and that life is slowly and silently coming full circle. Before the dusk comes, we need to look around whether all corners have been swept and cleaned. There will be accounting – debtors and creditors. Let there be a strong line underlining the words: has been paid in full. There is only one thing that we ask of you: protect all that we endow you, and add to it something more from you, so that our descendants have even more, and teach them to live in frugality, love and concord, in sacrifice for others, live for work for the country, and then the true paradise will come to earth.”

“I remember that I went to sleep at night, and then suddenly around ten o’clock – we stayed in barracks which were built of wood and plywood, and we could often see stars shining through – we saw that there was a great light, but we didn’t know what was happening. We looked out of the window and suddenly it changed into beautiful colourful shapes which looked like little trees. There were these little trees all over the sky, and on the ground the light was so intense that you could find a needle easily. I thought: ‘What’s going on?’ Suddenly there was a roar. We thought it was thunder and we thought it strange, because it was in February. Then one squadron of airplanes flew over. It was followed by another one. The whole sky was now ablaze. I said: ‘Christ, Máňa, look, it looks like Christmas tress. Look. It’s so beautiful!’ We were staring at it in amazement. But then it all began: a long row of airplanes, one next to the other. They were flying. They flew into the middle of the sky and bombs began dropping down. We could only hear the great din. Suddenly massive fires sprung up everywhere and we realized: ‘Christ Jesus, they are bombing!’ They didn’t even have time to sound the sirens. Somebody said that a Czechoslovak flag suddenly appeared in Rössen. I thought: ‘I see, so now we can see how it really is.’ One row of planes flew away and it turned away and it was immediately followed by another one. It went by one by one – carpet bombing. It was terrible. It was not possible to escape. I said: ‘We cannot stay here, if a bomb drops here, we are all dead.’ We wanted to run away, but there was a wall, a deep gorge and then a fence. I still don’t know how I managed to climb over the wall when the bombs began falling. I fell down and other people were falling on top of me. It is completely out of my memory. We just wanted to get out of that hell. Jana, Máňa. Věra cried: ‘Come over here, girls, it’s possible to climb here.’ We eventually got to a forest. I don’t know how we got out of it, I only remember that we then found ourselves by the main church in Dresden, and the church was damaged. They ran into the church and I was saying: ‘I will not stay here, I’m going away.’ I got up and I went outside on the other side. At that moment the church got hit. It was horrible. Then I came to myself. We were still holding hands with Máňa. She dated a smart guy, they liked each other, and he was now urging us: ‘Come here girls, come over here!’ This way we got all the way to the poets’ cemetery above Dresden. Only there we could find some quiet place. From there we managed to reach another place, but I was no longer aware of it, I just let myself be dragged by them as some stupid cow.”

“We entered the first house in Louny. There was a woman, who was a German through and through, but she invited us to come inside and she even went to her neighbours to ask them for some flour. She baked some sweet buns to gave us for the journey and she said: ‘Please, go away quickly. My son is in the SS and if he sees you here, he will kill you and me.’ We thus thought that we really ought to get out quickly. We took the refreshments and we wanted to go out. We were leaving the house through the window, and at the same moment he was coming to his mom’s house through the door. ‘You got somebody in there, don’t you?! Who is it?’ ‘No, nobody, there is not anybody.’ He was banging his head on his mom’s door. The door led into the room in which we were. I noticed it as I was jumping out of the window. I heard the noise. She was lamenting: ‘No, no, no.’ We were running. We hid into a sewer and we could see the Germans outside going through the town and looking for us. But they didn’t see us in the sewer. There was another group of people going by and they were shooting at them, they probably thought that it was us. I said: ‘Poor woman, now she took the blame for us. She was a German, but she was so good and she didn’t inform upon us, she didn’t say anything.’ Then we came to a small railway station, and the train dispatcher bought tickets for us. He told us that it was not far away and that we would have to take any train which was available. We rode cargo trains, passenger trains, all kinds of trains. We even rode a train which carried soldiers to the front. The train stood there, and we just got on and went. This way we eventually reached Moravia.”

“Three days later we found ourselves I Dresden, and from there they were immediately sending us away. I was waiting what would happen, and three men suddenly stormed into our train compartment shouting: ‘Go out, out, raus, raus!’ We got out. They were counting us into groups of ten: ‘Ten people, and move on.’ We didn’t know anything. They counted another ten persons. Marie and I held hands and there was one short man, and I thought: ‘Oh, his eyes are so blue like my dad’s eyes.’ He was counting nine – ten, and he was about to separate us. He glanced at me, he looked at Marie, and he looked at the two of us clutching hands, and he motioned to us – and we thus ran there together. ‘Finally, at least somebody who is a human!’ I thought. But Marie got lost and I didn’t know where she was. We rode the train for a long time, and suddenly I found her. We held hands again and we stayed together. They counted us again, and again the overseer counted us well, so that we remained together. We arrived to the camp Glasshütte near Dresden – Gemeinschaftslager. We held hands again in order to get assigned to the same room. There was no interpreter and they were all shouting in German and we thus decided to wait and see what would happen. They made us get into one car and then they told us to get off in some place. It was already at night, and we didn’t see anything except one large well-lit house. We got in and we could smell potato pancakes, which made me feel a lot calmer. I thought: ‘Potato pancakes is a good thing.’ There was a fat German woman, who looked like some cheerful granny, and she threw one big pancake onto a plate for each of us and poured some tea into a cup, and that was our meal. Then they led us into a large room, where there were fifty of us. There were bunk beds. Suddenly I heard a rough-sounding voice: ‘Virgins go to upper bunks, whores to the lower bunks, and sissies in the middle.’ What a welcome! I thought: ‘Christ, what’s that?’ And the girl with a harsh voice explained. ‘Girls, don’t be surprised, but we need to make you secure, because we don’t know what can happen. That’s the way it is.’ And it was so. We all began to scramble for the upper bunks, and they were even helping us to climb there.”

“There were people who arrived to the border regions, and they were often not capable to do what was needed. They were able to do something, but not everything. They did not know about the rotation of crops and sowing the fields. For instance, there was somebody who had been employed on a farm before, but now he came to the borderland, and here he became a manager of the entire farm. He didn’t know what to do with hit. He didn’t have any grain to sow, he didn’t have anything, and he had to get it all done. Not everybody was up to it, because everyone has the level of abilities set differently – and I don’t mean the knowledge of sowing methods, but the mind setup. Some people knew the sowing methods, some did not, but they needed help in some other area, like cattle rearing or something else. He would eventually say: ‘I give up. I will just sow something in there and I don’t care anymore.’ If he knew how to tend cows, he went to work with cows. If he knew how to tend calves, he went to work with calves. If he knew how to tend hens, he went to work with hens. It was thus good for them. We had an entire village there, it was called Svatoňovice, and it was a village full of kulaks. Kulaks were the people who were causing problems at home, and they were thus relocated to Svatoňovice. These people were the negative types, so to speak. A farmer came to me and asked me: ‘Christ, what am I to do?’ A guy in my cooperative breeds pigeons there. He has a lot of them and he does not want to go to work for me. I asked him: ‘Does he have a lot of pigeons?’ ‘He does.’ ‘And what does he do with them?’ ‘Nothing, he just breeds them.’ Fine, so he takes care of pigeons, let him work with pigeons and that’s it.’ ‘No, we need him to work on the farm.’ I thus went to see this pigeon breeder. He didn’t even want to let me in. I told him: ‘I will not cross your threshold, but I only want to ask you about the pigeons? Why do you breed them?’ He said: ‘That’s not anybody’s business. I used to breed pigeons at home, and so I do it here. I will not do anything else.’ ‘Fine, but you could at least help us. You need to have some fodder for the pigeons, don’t you? So come help us at least in turn for the fodder.’ ‘No way.’ But when the young people arrived and worked with pigeons, he exclaimed: ‘I cannot watch this, they do it all wrong.’ He got up, cursed the youth and showed them how to do it. We eventually got him out of his attitude. And it was fine. We had a problem, but it got resolved. The young people were working and I still remember one of the songs they were singing: ‘Under the mountain, under the mountain...’”