Jaroslav Spurný

"I spent four months there. Velká Hleďsebe, Horní Žandov, Planá u Mariánských Lázně, right in the border zone we crashed. I have to say it was pretty good, because I was in the army and we had a pretty good business. Some of the locals who moved in, who came from Volyn and I don't know where else from, different people came to us when we were demolishing the house. They always gave us something in return. When the house was being demolished, we always had a policeman who would go with the commander and go through the house, because the Germans had all kinds of things hidden in the walls and everywhere. There were all kinds of things in there, but they didn't want the soldiers to get their hands on it. There was gold bricked up, electric motors bricked up, Persians wrapped up in different fabrics, and I don't know what else, because the Germans were coming back and they thought maybe they could get something else out of there. And we were liquidating it all, and the politruk was standing there, and before it was to be run over with a bulldozer, it was to be looked through, what was found there. Some of the locals always told us, 'Throw it over the fence here, boys.' We did it secretly. If they found out, we were in trouble."