“In Luck and Rovno there were recruiting places, so called punkts, and there Czech volunteers were applying. It was very spontaneous. Whole families were applying – the father, his sons. Often even underage boys were applying who were adding their years of age. There were many cases like that. Even women were applying. And nobody ever asked – what for it. We knew that we were going for death, although we were imagining it at that time more as in a cinema. In reality it was then completely different. But to tell the truth, I would go there again. I don´t want to make any hero of myself, but I think that I would go anyway.”
“I was mainly a health worker, only I was not in a hospital, but directly at the infantry regiment. At the same time I worked also as a telephonist. Thus I represented several services. Every while they brought an injured to us. Our task was to give him first aid and then they were taken further, to a field-hospital. The injuries were various, but mostly splinters, scorches… When you get injured, you don´t feel it at all at the first moment, only after a while, when it started to bleed, it started to hurt too. Everybody had pains, everybody wanted to live and everybody wanted to survive. All of us loved the life and the things waiting for us here in the liberated homeland. Sometimes we also helped with letters to those who could not write on their own.”
“We had in our unit also a military music. And because after some fights the units were so weakened that they were not able to fight any more, the musicians had to go to fight as well. Their task was to demine the space in front of the marching unit. One of them stepped on a mine, another was completely stripped down by a mine and pieces of his cloths and skin and flesh were hanging on nearby trees. Another´s both legs were torn off under his knees… but this one may have survived it because health workers were very close and they gave him first aid straight away.”
“There was a creek there, and when there was peace, we went there to wash ourselves. We also took some water to a kettle to make tea. The contact man of my father, an older man, he was over fifty, said: ´Girls, where did you bath, before the turning or after it?´ We said: ´After the turning.´ ´Did you drink the water?´ ´No, but we have brought it with us to make tea…´ ´So come with me, I will show you something!´ So we went and about five metres after the turning there was a German lying in the creek, he had no shoes, no trousers any more and his arm was missing. Thus the water we had washed in was all flowing over him… Well, war, isn´t it… But it was no comfortable feeling.”
Have you ever witnessed persecution of the Jewish population? – “Not directly, but I knew that it was happening. Only when I was attending the eleven-year school, our classmates were Jews too. When we sometimes came to school, their places were suddenly empty. We didn´t speak about it, but we knew. We just looked at each other and it was clear to us. We all were frightened. The disappeared ones were many. The Germans took mostly the families at night. So we were not able to see it… I don´t know of anybody who would come back.”
“In the Czechoslovak territory there were no more hard fights taking place, but German units were undermining everything during their withdrawal. And it was the worst. I remember that we arrived in a village at night. Everywhere there were lots of snow and there was an ice crust on the road. When we arrived in the village, there was nobody anywhere, just dogs were barking. There was light only in the clergyman´s house, so we knocked there and the priest came. We asked him where all the people were, that we needed some help with the car stuck in snow. And he turned pale and asked us: ´Please, how did you get here?´ So we described him our way. ´God was with you,´ he said, ´the road is all undermined!´ At that time only the frosted ice crust on the road saved us…”
When we finally crossed the borders of Czechoslovakia, we were all glad of course The first we did was that we kneeled and kissed the ground You know, today when you see it on TV, it looks somehow strange You must live through what we did to understand it
Jiřina Vítková was born on 12th October 1925 in the Czech village of Mirohošť in the Dubno region in Volynia in the family of a professor. Her mother worked as a teacher. Jiřina visited at first a Czech school for four years, then she attended for five years a Polish school. After her ninth class she passed the entry exams for a gymnasium, but she didn´t finish it. Her father took part in the activities of a resistance group Blaník in Volynia. In March 1944 he joined the army. She followed soon his example and entered the Czechoslovak army on 18th June. She went through a five-week basic training, in Černovice she took oath. She entered the service as a health worker at the third artillery regiment. During the war she worked also as a telephonist. She was put to fights from 18th June 1944 until December 1945. As a part of the Czechoslovak army she took part in the Dukla operation and in the liberation of Czechoslovakia. She witnessed the tragic events around the villages of Machnowka and Wrocanka in the beginning of September 1944. In May 1945 she got to Prague for the first time. Like most of the Volynian Czechs, also Jiřina decided to stay forever in the newly found homeland. So she soon settled down in Pokratice near Litoměřice, where she and her father received a smaller house after a displaced German family. On 7th February 1948 Mrs. Vítková got married. Her husband, born in near Nové Kopisty, was sent during the war to forced labour to the Reich. Jiřina became a mother of three boys gradually. In December 1945 she left the army. Then she worked for 25 years as a payroll clerk. Jiřina Vítková was honoured several times, she received the Dukla memory medal, the medals For victory over Germany, For bravery and various Ukrainian awards.
