Jiřina Vašíčková

"I used to go to Rakovník to the fourth year of the town school, and I learned very well - we all learned well and my sister learned to sew. And because of me learning German, that I would lear German in the borderlands, and here Dad was ill and the administrator gave him notice, so he got offended... And that's how they turned up in Poláky for the second time. The first time there was a trickster accountant, so they left and later the owner was different and the same accountant was there again. And when we moved there, a German doctor from the neighbouring village, he liked me and he asked me if I would teach his boy Czech. And a week later he came to say that he couldn't take me, that the political situation was tense and he couldn't have a Czech girl in his family."

"And then suddenly, I still remember that night, I was sleeping like a log and they woke me up and it was mobilization. There was crying, screaming, everything. The soldiers said goodbye and left in the direction of Žatec, and Dad took a wagon and loaded furniture on it. We were used to moving, we had these lock chests. Dad used to sing, played the zither, the gramophone, although he was a blacksmith and the four of us inherited his long legs, but not his voice. So he put things in the chests and the train didn't go from Kadaň through Prunéřov to Žabokliky any more, so he had to go as far as there. And he arrived, handed over the horses and we walked there to Žabokliky. When I can't sleep, I can still see it, at the station, how we were crying, hugging strangers, goats were looking out of the open carriages, someone had them. We didn't know what was going to happen. And from morning till evening, they kept pulling the wagons back, until they pulled them back and the Germans took them anyway. And so then we arrived at Masaryk railway station in the evening, there [was someone] from the Czech Heart association, so he took the group, so our group got to that street - what's its name – Sokolská? There was a Sokol gym there, close to the station, and so everything was already prepared on the ground for us, and we were distributed around Prague, and we were given soup and a piece of bread or a bun in a pub, everywhere."

"They picked up all the car transport owners. This mill here belonged to a village on the Sázava River, Lešany, and all the car transporters were gathered there, and then he went to the front. In Brežany it was, there are still articles about it, such a gathering, they picked the up them and then he went to the front. He said afterwards, when he came back, that they had gone through Znojmo, it was after the bombing, so [the car was full of] dead bodies, that he had the car smeared with blood. And then he came to the Russian front, and soon they were behind the front, and he said, I preferred to sleep under the car, the Russians were already pushing them [the Germans], and a solitary bullet always clank clank, on the bonnet, so he used to hide. So the Russians were driving them back. And the car was running on wood gas, my husband rebuilt it and let it got stuck by tar on purpose. The convoy didn't want to go on anymore, now one [of them said], sabotage it. So they whistled, pulled the car out into the meadow, lifted the hood and smashed it with a grenade, and took my husband with them, and he escaped from Russia on the way. He didn't even know there was a revolution here, nothing. And I was pregnant with this one [daughter], I didn't know if he was alive, no money, luckily I was getting potatoes from the mill, because I used to go there to help, flour and everything. So then suddenly this one [daughter] was standing there watching, people were coming from the train, and suddenly, Dad is coming, well, Dad was dirty, hairy, we had to put a wooden bathtube for him into the shed so he wouldn't bring some germs."