Mgr. Naděžda Svobodová, roz. Pospíšilová

“The Russians wanted to rape Mařenka from the parsonage. It was next to the church, which stood on the hill, and they were chasing her in the garden, and luckily she managed to run away from them. And the following day, there were already convoys of Russian soldiers passing through the village, and I feared for my mom, because everybody was celebrating that they liberated us. It was actually in May and lilac bloomed and people were bringing them bouquets of lilac and my mom imprudently got into one of their cars or wagons or whatever vehicles they had and she rode with them. She did not come back for a long time. There were more women who rode with them, not just her. They were simply happy to see those Russian soldiers - the liberators . But they did not have a clue that these Russians soldiers wanted to rape Maruška there at night. Not all of them, but I was afraid indeed. I was very happy when my mom then came back.”

“My parents were in the Social Democratic Party. And when the communist then got together with the social democrats, they left the Party. They thus did not become members of the Communist Party and they cancelled their membership completely, because the party actually became disbanded. (And your parents were not persecuted for it in any way?) Dad later was. But it was only later, I remember that. He held a bit higher position, he was the head of the export department in the company Sigma Lutín. They had quite a lot of contracts because they produced everything from pumps to large pumping stations. And he was in charge of dispatching the products. He was the manager of the shipping department and he was responsible for all packaging and shipping of the products. But some high-ranking communist wanted to get his position, and so they somehow slandered him. I don’t know how. At night they arrived for dad, I remember that, and suddenly a car stopped in front of the house at two o ‘clock at night, and they took dad away. They took him somewhere to Olomouc to investigate upon him, but I think that he returned the same day. But they deprived him of his position in the company.”

“During the last night – we did not know yet that it was the last night – my mom sent us to our aunt, because they had a shelter dug out in their garden; it was only reinforced by beams and planks. And we were there till midnight, and then all of a sudden a bomb dropped about five metres away from that shelter, and it began falling upon us, and aunt said: ‘Hurry, we need to get to the Maryšek’s family’s cellar quickly.’ Well, and at that moment we discovered that my parents... that they were not there. Well, they came there about an hour later and they were totally scared. We were happy about that, because the atmosphere there was so horribly tense; people were praying and those Germans were gibbering in German at the same time, and they were scared to death as well. There were cannons set up in the village. One cannon stood in front of our house and they (Germans – ed.’s note) knew that it was the end and that no weapons would help them anymore, but they did not want to leave them there for their enemies and so they wanted to destroy them. They thus blocked the cannons’ muzzles and in all places, where the cannons were, they fired from them and the cannon muzzles thus broke apart. We later learnt that they (parents – ed.’s note), when they saw that there was shooting in the village and that they ought to go to the basement, too, they wanted to hide their radio. Dad wanted to get into the basement and as he was opening the covering, my mother was standing close by in the kitchen door and as he bent down to lower the radio there, suddenly there was a horrible blast. The door where my mom was standing, it was a glass door, but behind it there was a lockable wooden door, and a piece of shrapnel from that cannon muzzle flew through this door. The blast, fortunately, made my dad bent down even more, because the shrapnel flew immediately above his head, and then he stood up and somehow, I don’t know how, by a miracle, that piece got stuck in the wooden door above my mom. Both of them could have been killed by one piece of shrapnel during the last night of the war. (And so could you, when it dropped just five metres away from you…) But that was not so bad.,. Well, five metres. If it had hit us, well, right, it would have been over with us.”