Jaroslav Tesařík

"Because we were Czechs, we had freedom. But compared to us, the Poles were accommodated a little further away, and since Poland was at war with the Germans, they had it worse. They had set times when they had to be home in the evening and there was no wandering around outside like we did..."

"Another German came. He was already in civilian clothes, in a fur coat. He led us to the first carriage. The carriage (the train, ed.) had 7-8 cars, so that's quite a lot of metres. He locked us in the compartment, sat down and now, as we were sitting there, he says 'Ein Moment' and he ran out and ran back, it looked like he had forgotten something, some document or something. He was running back. And I was looking out the window, so I leaned over and I could see he was several cars away. I say to him, I say to him, 'Come on, let's run', he says, 'I don't know, I don't know'. I say 'I'm not thinking, let's go, before he gets out of here and back, we'll be gone'. He didn't go, I ran, I jumped over there those... back then, to add to that, nowadays there's one train after another going to the station, back then there was one two trains and nothing for a long time. There's a big platform at Breclav station, wide. The platform on the other side was a rubber goods factory, it's still there, I think. I jumped all those tracks. I could hear the whistle, but it's hard to know if the conductor is whistling for the train, or if he's whistling... you don't know. I'm at the wall, the wall was so low. I jumped over the wall and I ran across the yard and I ran on."

"We were free as Czechs there. There were many of us, several hundred. But the ones who were Polish, whether women or men, they had everything limited. Because Poland was at war with Germany. But not us, we gave ourselves for free. That was President Hacha. On the one hand, people were swearing at this Hácha, but on the other hand, if we had fought, we would have been smashed by planes, by everything. We wouldn't have fought back. He, as they say, saved us in this matter."

"And I came there. They stole our bicycles when the Germans were still there. I came there and now I saw on that car, there was a bicycle. Now the bicycles were piled up, a full wagon. I came... I told the lieutenant, the Russian, I told him to give me one and he said 'I'll have a vodka'. I knew my dad had 10 liters of slivovice buried there. All right. So I tell him yeah, come with me. So we went. There were these wagons, it was still standing still, because they couldn't go... so he came with me, we came home. I said to my dad, "Dad, he'll give us the bike we have here, he wants slivovice". "This is not a problem". No problem, Dad went into the cellar, dug up a litre of slivovice, gave it to him. He thanked him and left. And we...it was 10-11 o'clock and we had lunch...we had burnt down house, so we had lunch here at the aunt's place above the Sokol. So we went to lunch and after lunch we came back. And all the plum brandy dug up, everything was gone. So he probably took some other friend, as they say, with him. They dug up everything."

"Well of course we got one too. Then the cars were brought back to take us to Ostrava. They got to the station and loaded the iron ore on the wagon. The track was full of piles, not big piles. We were given pitchforks because they were such big lumps. And a pitchfork, if you know what iron ore is. That's heavy, you couldn't pick that up, so you threw those few pieces, you couldn't. So we were at it all day, we didn't get food. Well, in the evening they took us back to the camp and we got food there. And there was a room, everybody in his place. Well, in the camp that we were in, we were divided into little rooms, and in those little rooms there were about 12 of us, that was the number. And for sleeping, when you went to sleep, it wasn't that you slept on your bed, it was one bed like that room, big. There were...it was stuffed with what they called the straws, that was stuffed straw, all made up beforehand. Of course you washed up and so on. As you went to bed, you had to lie down in time, as you lay down early, the boys that were already there, you had a hard time getting in. That was terrible, it was always not knowing if you were going to sleep there, nobody wanted to get in there anymore, nobody wanted to move. Then where to sleep... so on the floor normally, there was a table and there were benches, so you slept on that bench or that table."