Josef Pokorný

„The army rushed from Kamenice and then moved to Seč and Běstvina. They killed three people here. Blažek was shot over there at the hill. And a woman, who was hiding in a sand-pit. They shot her too. And a small kid, who was looking out of the window. (And when the Russians came? What did it look like in Hodonín?) Well it was not much better really. They were looking for a capture. They´d take cow-gears we had. They´d simply take it with them.“

„There they were always the breakers before us, who shot out a rolling same as a chimney. And we had to throw it down the chimney and clean it down there. Then I was alone and there were pretty big stones that could not be thrown in whole. So I went to the shooter and he told me I should blast it myself. So he gave me the ‚šurka‘, as we called it. I put it on the stones and burnt it, it caught fire for I don’t know around four or five minutes. And at the same time they blasted something else on a different place and the pressure wave shut my lamp down. So I had no matches and had the stuff on fire. I was really lucky then to get out of the rolling. Through the chimney hole in I had to climb up to the leaders.“