Maria Sokolová

"As children we were terribly afraid of the Germans. We were in the pastures and a German came to us. We used to sit by the well, because there we could always drink at the well when we were thirsty. And so we sat by the well and talked like kids. And suddenly a German came to us and we got quiet and we were afraid of what he would do to us. And he had a cup and he took out a snifter and he took water from the well and he put the snifter in it for us. And he wanted us to drink. And we said, "He wants to poison us. We didn't take any of it from him. He drank first, he probably knew we were scared, and we still didn't take it from him."

"There from our village the Jews were popular. They had children, they went to school with us. Nobody had anything against them, and suddenly people felt sorry for them. Some people were terribly mean. One Jewish boy hid and one guy dug him out and beat him up some more. And then the Germans just took him away. But longer, like the second or third day. And he came back after the war and he said, 'I could have taken it from him away, but I'm not that bad.' And he was the only one who saved himself from the war."

"Then came the blackout, it had to be blacked out. I remember when we came in from the field, we drove the cattle in, and it was full of Germans, full of German soldiers. And they opened houses and they were everywhere, they didn't ask anybody. And there weren't any factories there with us, so that maybe the horn would go off when a plane was flying or something. I'm talking towards the end of the war almost, 1943/1944. That's when there was a plane flying, and we'd pack up our things and run somewhere. Even at night. And one night we're running into an orchard and suddenly a German soldier with a rifle. And back, zurück, zurück, back. And we showed him the plane and he said, 'That's ours, that's ours.' So we went back. And we were already dressed and sleeping."