Second Lieutenant Miroslav Škrabal

“Our Tank Brigade had eight tanks only. Actually the whole Brigade wasn't ready to take action in fights. And actually due to the fact that the Slovak National Uprising was about to start, it was somehow arranged that the Slovaks would hold the other side for us, OK. So what simply occurred was the move of our Army from the area where we actually did our training. We were specifically in the village Rusov. We moved along the borders, well, not far from the town Krosno. And some friends of mine and I were chosen as the so called ‘reguljoštici.’ It means those who command transport, OK. And I remember I was allocated to a crossroad, it was just outside Krosno where we actually changed the direction of movement of the troops, OK. Our whole army corps actually went along the way through the crossroad. Yeah, they simply counted with the fact, with that fact that it would end up the way they probably imagined that. Simply that we would go through the Dukla Pass without any tough fights, of course. However, unfortunately something totally different happened, OK. After the troops movement, then when launching an attack on Krosno, after the artillery training and then during the assault – not even the whole Krosno was liberated at once, OK. So our ‘reguljoštici’ activity ended with that. Of course we went to the liberated area but what was going on there, I would simply never want to experience that in my whole life again. OK, because the Army gathered in the small area, the Germans drew off around the hill tops and then the shooting, OK. It was simply a slaughter. It was not only the town. Of course the road led towards Dukla, OK. Actually Dukla started in Krosno. It was Machnówka, Wrocanka, Bóbrka, the battle actually occurred just there. I worked as a ‘reguljoštik’ at that time, OK, and we were actually together with our commander in the area. Just there where the grenades were dropped, OK. Simply there, the Germans actually saw all the movement from the hills, OK. They focused on some spots and somewhere it was just impossible to take another way but there, OK. Then they simply battered that there. There were so many dead people there in those days, OK, that nobody can ever imagine that, OK. Saw with my own eyes how our commanders as well as actually the Soviet commanders, OK, drove all back again, OK, Because some soldiers simply took to their heels, OK, they didn't know at all where they belonged, OK.”

“I think, it's again my subjective opinion, that they so often wasted so many human lives in vain there at that time, totally in vain. After the assault that was at Nižný Komárnik, which was unsuccessful in a way, we actually had to come back. The headquarters reported that the Germans retreated. And I remember that because I was lucky, of course, that I was always among the commanders, OK. You actually got to know quite a lot there, OK. And a chief staff officer came and simply said that we actually had to follow upon the Germans' heels. OK, however, to follow upon someone's heels and upon someone's heels, there is a great difference. And he meant by that that we would immediately get into our tanks and off after them, OK. However, what was needed first was to clear the ways of mines. Because when the Germans retreated they placed mines in all the ways. Well, and we went through a ford there, we got behind the first villages and there was another ford there, OK. And a friend of mine and I said: ‘Let us not go in the first tank, OK, in that case let's get into the third one.’ OK, it was a good decision. Well, the first tank went simply through the ford across the river, and it of course crashed into an anti-tank mine, OK. Of course there were two casualties, two with serious injuries and a battalion commander, a Novotný. It only took his watch off his wrist and it took his cap, OK. And of course we got stuck in there until they cleared all the ways of mines.”

“Rovno was relatively much inhabited with Jewish population. The Germans drove all the inhabitants into the so called ‘ghettos.’ Our town had about sixty-five, perhaps seventy thousand inhabitants, OK. Well, and perhaps twenty percent out of that, OK, they were Jews, you see. OK and they simply drove them, well, moved them to the ghettos. 'Course that everyone had to leave his or her home with, as we say, with a little bundle, OK, all they could carry themselves. And they had to leave all the rest where they originally lived. As far as I can remember, they changed the ghetto once more, OK. They found another place and moved them again and of course many people actually lost their lives. There was a street at our place, it was called the White Street. And then they actually put all the Jewish population to death there. I witnessed once on my way to work how they were destroying the ghetto. There was a German soldier who drove a completely naked girl in front of himself on the road. I have no idea how old she was, perhaps 15, 16, 17 years old, OK. Well and she of course when she ran in front of him and he followed her with a bayonet, OK, she held her hands on her genitals. Well, and he always poked her with his bayonet from behind, OK, and of course she always threw her arms up, OK. What did that end up like, I haven't got a clue. However I saw this with my own eyes.”

“And during the second wave of bombing it was about four o'clock in the afternoon... we actually lived just at the military property. And there was a street, it was a point and well, we lived there... all the archies shooting the planes... The Germans dropped, well the plane dropped a bomb and it fell right into our yard. Well, there were about ten dead bodies. In only those... we three as we lived next to each other. My aunt, we lived in the middle and my Granddad lived next door. I was the only one in our family who was directly injured, OK. Otherwise they were killed... it was my Granddad, a splinter hit his forehead. Then my aunt died – she was pregnant in the eighth month. She held a two-year-old child in her arms, OK, it was dead. My cousin, nineteen years old, was dead. And there were also two wives of the officers, OK, they were also dead. Well, virtually seven people by one hit. And it was on the first day of the war.”