Eva Borková

"Also in that May 1945, we kids were playing in the yard and suddenly we heard shooting from the neighbours. We went running to see what was going on. We ran around the garden and ran into Bohata's yard. There was a dead soldier lying on the ground, his arms spread out. Mrs. Bohatová was crying, Mr. Bohata was cursing, swearing. A military car arrived, soldiers jumped down, grabbed him by his arms and legs, threw him on the back and drove away. Later, when people recalled it, I learned that the Russian soldier had been hanging on in their yard, making suggestionss, courting their fifteen or sixteen-year-old daughter. Mr. Bohata didn't like it, so he stepped in. But because the soldier was adamant, he didn't want to leave their yard, Mr. Bohata called out to some Soviet soldiers who were passing by. They came, listened to the complaint that their comrade was harassing them [Bohata family], and they put him against the wall and shot him right on the spot by the wall of the house. Again there was a great crying and wailing, then - I saw that already - they came with the car and took him away."

"We went to the cellar when [the German soldiers] were leaving. My father came from somewhere and said, 'We have to hide in a cellar.' We didn't have a cellar, we went across the street to the Heller family. We settled in their cellar. Dad left. German soldiers burst in. I remember that 'schnell, schnell, los, los'. We had to leave the cellar. They stood us in front of the grey wall of the house. There were all mothers and children. They were two young soldiers. They were standing by the garden fence, pointing their rifles at us. Mummy was crying, and the other women too. The wife of the headmaster of the Chodov school, Mr. Vágner, was among us. She spoke German well. She got out and spoke to the soldiers in German. It looked like she was scolding them. She was harsh with them and telling them off. The soldiers started talking among themselves, lowered their rifles and said we'll go with them. They led us, we walked across the main streets, they took us towards the Kunratice Forest to a kind of a hollow way. There were a lot of other people there. We sat down there, we stayed there until dark. The stars were shining. Then they gave the order that we could go home. We walked in the dark through the fields and we heard shooting from the Krč and Kunratice forest. Occasionally we heard someone fall. But nothing happened to us, we reached the border of the village, the first family houses. But we couldn't get across the main road, it was full of convoys. Probably German ones. A local policeman took care of us and led us to one of the houses, to their cellar. They sent us to their children. Before I fell asleep, I remember the Czech policeman sitting on the steps to the cellar with a German shepherd and he was stroking its head. In the morning, when I woke up, my mother was saying: 'Hooray, the war is over, it's peace, let's go home!' So we went. And at the end of the street there was lying this dead policeman and the dead dog next to him. Mummy was crying so much. I was crying, I was sorry. We got home, and Dad was sitting at the table, his head in his hands, and when we walked in, he and Mom were hugging and greeting each other. And I took advantage of the moment and went out again."

"Mum was from Wallachia, so every holidays regularly at the beginning of July my mum would pack us up and we would go to Wallachia. We were there for two entire months. As long as Mum didn't go to work, she was there with us all the time. We would come back at the end of August. We lived there in the countryside, in the mountains. They were farmers, they had terraced fields in the mountains. There was talk that they were already establishing cooperative farms (JZD) in Haná and everyone had to join them. They consoled themselves that here in Wallachia the fields could not be integrated, that it was on the slopes, in the mountains, no vast fields could be created. They will let us live as we are living now. Unfortunately, they didn't let them. They had to join a cooperative farm (JZD), everything was nationalized. By the time I was fifteen, I had more sense. We came for holidays and went to see my uncle Jožka Ostřanský. I came into the room and he was sitting at the table, his hard, worked-up hands clasped on the table. I said hello to him. I could see he was sad. I asked him if he was sorry that everything had been taken away from them, that he was no longer a farmer. That he couldn't make his own decisions. He was nodding and saying, ’God gave, God has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.' I wondered how he could be so humble. He was already very old, but he still went to the cooperative farm to help, to check on his two cows and the horse, how they were doing. I admired those old farmers for bearing it. They lost their decision-making. It was all collectively made."

“Then the trouble was that everything started being tightened [during the normalisation, in 1974 - ed.], and the Central Committee of the CPC [Communist Party of Czechoslovakia - trans.] put us under the supervision of social services authorities, to see if we were bringing up the children correctly in the spirit of socialist morals. They began checking to make sure none of the [foster] mothers took any children to church. They did, of course, and they were reported and got into trouble. Luckily it never went as far as they threatened it would – that they’d close up the village and take the children from us. Professor Matějček comforted us that such were the times and that we should tread carefully so that they wouldn’t dissolve the children’s villages. I tried not to stick out, so to say. But I would often take the children to visit Grandma and Granddad, my parents in rural Moravia, so I’d take the children to church there. The village management appealed to us that the situation was serious and that the authorities were looking for a way to liquidate the villages. Social workers even visited schools and forced children from SOS villages to show them their snacks.”

“We came to edge of Chodov. The main road there was so full of German military cars that we couldn’t even cross over to the other side. We were standing there helpless, but a Czech policeman with a German shepherd took us into his care and led us to a nearby family house, where he stuck me and my brother into the cellar, tucked us under a duvet with the local children; and the Czech policeman sat down on the stairs, and his dog sat down faithfully next to him, and he was stroking the sheepdog, and then I fell asleep. Mum woke us up in the morning, saying it was peace, that the war was over, and I stepped out into the street, and the policeman who had taken care of us was lying there dead, and his dog was lying shot a few metres further on. It was dreadful. Mum cried, I cried. Then we went home, where we were welcomed by Dad. Then the Russians came, and people from all around were gathering at the Sokol [gym] hall, so I slipped out after them. The Russians were there, playing the accordion and giving away sugar and chocolate to people, and then my parents came to get me and gave me a proper scolding, saying I mustn’t go outside by myself now.”

“We didn’t have a cellar in our house, so we went to hide in the neighbour’s cellar. There were more mums with children, dads too. Late in the afternoon that same day, German soldiers burst into the cellar, and with terse commands they forced us to abandon our shelter. While yelling ‘los!’ and ‘schnell!’ they stood us all against the wall of the house. Fortunately for us, our dad had just left the cellar a moment before, but the other dads were led away, to Kunratice Forest. Young soldier boys with guns stood over me; opposite us and above them I could see apple trees blooming white in the soft afternoon sun. The soldiers finally lined us up and took us away to a large group of civilians by Kunratice Forest. We stayed there until midnight, when the soldiers released the whole group. We came out of the forest towards Chodov, and we suddenly came under gunfire coming from the forest. From time to time I could clearly hear someone fall to the ground after getting hit. Mum was bending down over us to protect us with her own body until we reached the edge of Chodov.”