Vladimír Šrajter

“The Jew was called Vlk, he had a daughter, a wife, and they owned a general store. And seeing that he knew that the Germans were eliminating the Jews, he dug a hole for himself in the National House - I don’t know if someone helped him - right under the stage. In the peace years we’d used it to rehearse theatre plays, both us children and adults, or for sports. There was a door on the side of the stage, and that’s where they had their dugout. He only came out at night, for food and the such. There was a Czech house next to them, but no one told on them, because everyone felt sorry for them.”

“So this Hrouda was issued grenades and ammunition, he swore like a pagan, he was spitting with rage, nervous, and injured to boot, he’d had his shoulder shot. You could tell he wanted to have his revenge on the Fritz when he alone went back for the bullets - he had no other way how to decide, seeing that we didn’t have a single commander there. Well, so this Hrouda from the second battalion crawled all the way up to the Germans and threw the grenade straight into the bunker [where the machine gunner was]. But the first grenade didn’t do anything, it didn’t kill him, because he kept on firing. So [Hrouda] stood up right in front of him, lobbed a grenade in, and let himself get shot.”