Anna Skákalová

"I remember that once there was a celebration of a golden wedding. I was back then in the church and underneath the chapel, there was a house that had its roof going down all the way to the ground. One youngster, who wanted to be funny, drew a gallows and he wrote 'death to Germany' underneath it. By then I was already married. At school, there was a German teacher. But he wasn't a bad man. But his wife was a staunch German and she reported it to the police. The Germans came and arrested all the young lads. They also took my brother, Jindra Pospíchal, who was fourteen years old. I was here back then. I heard that they arrested the lads on Sunday and gave them no water until Monday, nor any food. So we agreed that we'd collect food in Lhota and would give it to them."

"It was terrible, the Germans were furious. We advised my father not to go into the woods at that moment, as it was too dangerous. But my father insisted he had to go as otherwise it would be too conspicuous. So he went out and somewhere in the forest he was caught by the Germans. They interrogated him on the whereabouts of the partisans. In particular, they wanted to know where the guerillas had their bunkers and where they were hiding. My father said: 'I only care about my work. I don't search for bunkers. I have no clue where they are'. They didn't like his response. They insisted that he tell them what he knew. My father simply didn't tell them anything. So they brutally beat him up there. This incident took place in the fall and when I came back in the spring to work on the field, he was still black from the beating. They allegedly even poked him in the genitals. They thought they had beaten him to death so they left him lying there. A man was working on the field nearby and heard what happened there. When the Germans went away, he stopped his horse and ran there. He found my dad beaten unconscious and crippled there. So he got a stretcher from the armory and carried my father away. In the hospital, when they learned that he was beaten up by the Germans, they didn't even put him to a bed, but instead let him lie on the floor somewhere in the corridor on a stretcher. I thought 'I always come for my ration of fear back here'."

"It was almost at the end of the war. The Germans marched from the direction of Ruda and here they encountered some guerrillas who went on the road. When the guerillas saw the German car, they opened fire. The car overturned and the guerillas probably shot its tires to pieces. The papers that were there were blown by the wind across the entire meadow. The Germans were furious again. Even though there were no casualties on their part. It was just the car that took damage. They were seriously threatening to burn down the village, Štědrákova Lhota. Fortunately, they didn't have the time to do it anymore. But if they had had more time, they would have done it."

"In Vinoř, after the bombing, there was an awful lot of people who died. At the time we fled from Vinoř and came here because we received informed that our house was damaged by the air raids. The windows were smashed. It was on Palm Sunday. We had lunch on the table, but we didn't have time to eat it. The kids were in the basement under the bath tub. The men didn't know how to put wood in the windows to protect our house from shrapnel. It was terrible. We lived on the outskirts of the street and there was a field and on it a haystack where I wanted to hide. But they wouldn't let me go and hide there and my brother-in-law said: 'No, no, no, we'll in the cellar'. We survived the raid unharmed, just the windows were shattered. Then the factory producing paint and color - I think it belonged to a guy called Malec - went up in flames. It was terrible. There was thick smoke and it was impossible to breathe. The next day we ran away with my grandmother. We went to Počernice and saw dead bodies everywhere on the way. And the haystack, where I wanted to hide, was full with people who had fled from Kbely. It was allegedly full of blood. It was crammed with so many people and they were all dead."