Miroslav Surovec

“The political screening of non-Party members then took place. There was the woman who was the school principal and two old geezers from the community committee. They would be now even younger than I am now [laughing]. The community committee was an institution which made decisions about all kinds of things – whether somebody’s son would be allowed to study a secondary school... At that time we were told to fill out a questionnaire of several pages, and on the last blank page we had to write in our own words how important it was for us that we were liberated again [by the Russians]. I refused, and so they called me in, and I almost thought it was funny, because when they called me one of the members of the committee addressed me: ‘So, comrade, start speaking,’ and I didn’t react to it [laughing]. He then repeated it. ‘I don’t understand you.’ He said to me: ‘So, read what you wrote as this confession of yours.’ The communists called it a confession… And since he provoked the answer like that, I replied to him: ‘Wait, only people who have sinned have to make a confession of their sins, but I have not sinned in any way, and I have no confession to make here.’ He jumped out, his face turned red – [he said] that I if a had not brought him the questionnaire filled out within twenty minutes, I would face the consequences, and I, obviously, didn’t bring him anything.”

“That day, it was on May 2, 1945, dad was standing by the wicket in front of our house and a convoy of German horse-drawn wagons and horses had been passing by already for several days continuously, and they were already retreating. I was looking at them from the window, and suddenly two of them ran there. They arrived to the Virgin Mary church with a tank, but it was just a surveying tank… The two Soviets ran down and what is interesting – and I saw it – each of them carried a submachine gun over his shoulder. They ran in there and fired into the transport. The horses startled, some remained lying on the ground, and as the convoy was passing down the Revolution Street, there was probably some of their sentry, and they blasted the bridge – it was the old bridge, now there is the new bridge, by ‘Kolo.’ They let the bridge explode even with their own people on it.”