Ing. Zdeněk Rerych

“I went from the courtyard to the woodshed to pick up some logs and suddenly I saw a group of nine Germans coming. They were armed. I didn’t know what to do but I knew I couldn’t run and that I had to act like nothing was going on. So I went to get the log, I picked it up and slowly walked back to the house. I knew that there were three of those Russians sitting in the back room. I closed the door behind me and I said that the Germans were coming. I opened the window and all of them jumped out and ran off into the dense forest. Meanwhile mother went to meet the Germans. They were just entering the courtyard. Mother was asking them in German what they wanted and they said they were looking for partisans, escaped prisoners and such filth. My mother was asking with surprise what partisans were and that she saw no one like that around. She struck a conversation with them and offered them warm milk for breakfast that she just milked the cow… and they accepted.”

“In 1943 the first soviet soldier came to us after escaping from the prison camp in Nürnberg. He was a lieutenant named Burmistrov. He found our forest cabin, my father was doing something outside and suddenly a man came to him, starved, torn up, dressed in old army uniform remains, and his first words were: “Give bread.” ”

“Father was first sentenced to half a year but the prosecutor appealed against it, said it was too little and he got a year. We were never told officially the exact reason why he was arrested. But we had our suspicions. The Vlajka member was interested in the so-called human hunts that were happening after the war and he supported that, as the president of the national committee. But that was when my father was already against it. The Vlajka man knew that we could still have some guns at home and we did, we had them hidden in all kinds of places and they found them during a house search and so that was the reason why they arrested father.”