Jiří Čechura

“The buses were crammed full, and they were fueled by wood gas. The bus would suddenly stop in the middle of a hill, and the driver would have to climb up the ladder to reach the boiler which was attached from the outside at the back of the bus. He had to poke inside, throw in a log of wood, and only then the bus would start moving again.”

“On November 8, 1943 she stepped in front of us and asked: ‘Boys, do you know what anniversary we have today?’ Obviously, nobody knew and she explained: ‘Well, on November 8, 1620 the Czech estates army was defeated in the battle of White Mountain near Prague and three hundred years of Habsburg servitude followed.’ She continued to explain the hardships we suffered under the Habsburg rule. The class was really so silent that you could hear a pin drop. We all became petrified. Although we were just ten years old, we were aware that she probably ought not to be saying this.”

“We received numbers to put on our backs and breasts. A medicine ball was placed in the middle of the yard, and Herr Leiter climbed up a stepladder. He was a German who could not speak Czech but he was in charge of the whole examination process. He had a whistle and a notebook and the teachers took their places around us along the wall. They climbed up the wall so that they could see well, and when Herr Leiter blew the whistle, we had to start fighting for the ball.”

“After graduation I was to start working as a teacher. I did not know where I would be placed, but already while we were at school they were persuading us to go somewhere to the Karlovy Vary region. At first we did not want to, but then as members of the Youth Union we said: ‘So what, it does not matter after all, we are young and we will go!’ I eventually did not go to Karlovy Vary region, anyway, but instead I became employed in Černošín in the Stříbro district.”