Anna Šubová

“People moved out from Alesd, and when the Russians were approaching, many people from Alesd, priests and such, were hiding in those villages. The Germans went first, but they were already fleeing, because the Russian army was already behind them. We were afraid. My father was on the front and we the kids were at home only with our mom. As the armies were passing, there were always soldiers who wanted to rape and loot, and they were walking through the villages and looting. We were afraid that somebody would attack us at night. Girls were hiding in attics, and we were scared. When the front was passing, there was some shooting, and we were not allowed to leave the house, we were told to stay inside. Our pigs, which had been used to grazing outside, broke through the door one day and ran away into a pea field. There were bullets flying by my head, but I wanted to chase the pigs away. I would have felt sorry if they had destroyed the peas, because I thought they would damage the field. My parents were shouting at me and cursing me, but I went there and chased the pigs away. When I returned home, I was punished, because they had ordered me not to go out. But I thought about the damage that the pigs would have done. The important people were hiding in our village, too; we were providing a hiding place for the priest, for instance. They were wearing women’s clothing, and they were helping us, digging the fields and so on, but they were wearing women’s clothes.”

“I went to do feather-plucking to Velíšek, which was a nearby village where we the girls were going to help, and I had to sit separately and I was not even allowed to sit among the other girls. Their moms did not allow it. It was because of my haircut. My mom was crying and she would not even talk to me. When she entered the kitchen through one door, I left through the other door. Whenever she looked at me, she started crying. I didn’t know what to do, it was not possible to extend the hair. I had a perm done immediately; I didn’t even know what it was. The hairdresser asked me what kind of perm I wanted, whether lukewarm or cold. I have never had it done before, and so I said that I wanted the lukewarm one. There was an electrical machine for that, which she plugged in, and she twisted a lock of my hair around the hair-curler, and secured it with a hair grip and when it began breaking, I was sweating all over, but it was finally done. I was sitting in the town square in Kaplice until half past seven in the evening and I was afraid to go home. At that time I was working in the kindergarten for agricultural workers’ kids, and there were children in prams as well as older children, because their moms went to work in the fields and they brought them over to us. I was working there with certain Mrs. Uvačíková, she was taking care of the kids and I was cooking. Her house was on my way and so I stopped by and asked her if she would be so kind to go home with me. I knocked at the door: ´Mrs. Uvačíková, please come with me.´ I was afraid to go home. Well, nothing happened, but my parents were crying at what I had done. I felt sick, because I didn’t know what to do, it was not possible to extend the hair anymore, because I had been given my cut off pigtails and I carried them home in my hand. But all the other girls had their hair cut within a year, all of them. I was the one who went to theatre or to cinema. We were thus all assimilating in this way.”