Hana Přikrylová

"They wrote to me that because of the capacity of some - I looked into it recently - I was not admitted and that they recommended contact with the working class. So I went into production." - "And where did you go?" - "The metalworking enterprise of the capital city of Prague. That's where they made table sharpeners. First I worked at the drilling machine and then I worked on the lathe turning pinions. I wasn't very happy there because the environment harmed me, I had skin problems from that workroom. So I wasn't happy there, but I told myself I had to stand it. I needed a reference from them that I was behaving well and that they recommended studying."

"On 5 May 1945, my father came to Žamberk with my mother and me in his arms, and there was a commotion because the Jew who wanted his things back had returned. And so he was not received with any cheering in the town." - "Does that mean that people took their things?" - "I guess the Hostovský family hid something at their neighbors. They may have taken something, but I don't know exactly, don´t want to accuse anyone. But I do know that [my parents] had trouble getting things back. Or they denied having them, saying that maybe times had been hard and they had had to sell them and stuff like that. But my parents didn't cling to it. My mum was from a poor background, so she didn't care, and my dad was glad he survived. They didn't worry about property things."

"It is just that he [father Jan Hostovský] did not join the transport. They gave my grandmother an injection and he went into hiding. In Kněžství, there were five cottages. The people there must have known, it was unbelievable. And they were supported materially with food by the local miller, because there was another person hiding at the Kytlic family. He was a Pole from Vilnia and he was a partisan. He was called Big Eda. He was executed later. Pietraszyn. And during one accidental visit of the Czech gendarmerie in Kněžství, the gendarme mentioned that a Nazi action was being prepared, and it was necessary to hide these two fellows, my father and Big Eda. So the son of the Kytlic family went to Žamberk and looked for a girl, I don't know her name, who had been my father's sweetheart before the war started, to see if she could hide him. And she was afraid, so she refused. And how my mother found out, I don't know, but she found out that my dad needed help, and she hid him actually in the sanatorium in this sort of garden house where she was living alone. And there he stayed with her for about three weeks - and they decided their future life, that they were going to get married."