“It was known, who wouldn’t know about it there. We moved away afterwards. Our original flat was insufferable, so we moved from Záluží to Litvínov. My parents lived near the station around the time when the deportations took place. From what I remember, we saw them shuttle them in on lorries. They had their hand luggage, some kind of luggage with them, and there was always a train waiting for them there, they were gathered up from the surrounding area, because we had the station there, so they brought them in from far and wide. So they boarded [the train], and it was said that they were being taken across the borders. That there was someone else to take care of them there. But there were soldiers about, Russian soldiers as well because they were everywhere back then. Czech soldiers, too. But I didn’t see that anyone shot at the Germans when they boarded the trains. I didn’t see anything like that. They took them away, they just had some small luggage with them, that’s all true. In the end, I myself can say that they started it themselves, you could say, all of this, what went on. Hitler started it all, didn’t he?”
“I also saw - and I told you about this last time - I’m not quite sure now why we went to Hostomice, probably to visit Granny. When we went there we usually took the path through the brickyard, but that was closed, what with all the things going on. And so we had to go up and around by the square. We saw the stage there, already decorated with German flags, and by the time we came back - it was getting dark - that was in late August, early September, it was dusk. The Germans from the vicinity had a meeting there. They had torches, there was the Hitlerjugend, and a speaker - my dad said it was Henlein. He always said something, and it was drowned in the roar of everyone yelling ‘Heil Hitler’. It was kind of, it made me scared. It was kind of ugly, the torches, how they burned and how the people yelled, and him on the stage.”
“When you went towards Litvínov, there was a big POW camp there, but with Frenchmen, for a change. And there was a German barracks across the road, where the Germans were garrisoned. I went past the POW camp, and they always shouted at us, standing right by the fence. So I was there, and they kept shouting at me to run. I realised what was going on, although I was just fourteen years old. So I fled around the side, and there were these - if you ever saw them in a film - these kind of deep, zigzaging trenches, field trenches like in a war. Unfortunately, I fell into them. It was in March, and what with the recent thaw, I stepped too close to the edge and fell straight inside. It was abour a hundred and eighty centimetres deep, I was out of sight. But I saw the planes flying overhead, I saw beforehand how a military convoy was approaching from Litvínov. They were at the station there, several cars and tankers - I didn’t realise that until later. And suddenly, when I fell down there, it all broke out, and I saw the planes. I thought they’d fall on top of me, they were flying right above my head because the convoy was getting really close. They strafed it, there were explosions... it was terrible.”
Stanislava Barabášová, née Pospíšilová, was born on 18 May 1930 in Hostomice near Teplice, into a miner’s family. After moving to Záluží near Most, she witnessed the cohabitation of Czech and Germans before the outbreak of World War II. She saw Konrad Henlein speak in public, and towards the end of the war she experienced dramatic moments during an Allied bombing of a chemical plant, which almost cost her her life. In 1945 she witnessed the arrival of the Red Army and the expulsion of Sudeten Germans from Litvínov. After the war she trained as a shop assistant, married, and gave birth to three sons. As of 2017, she lives near her family in Písek and in Zákolany near Prague.
