Jindřiška Deáková

“All the residents of the house had to hide in the cellar. When we came there, there was this doctor with his family – there was his mother, his mother-in-law and his wife. And the teacher, she brought this man we didn't know. Only then we realized he was a partisan, who was hiding in the house the whole winter. My mother almost fainted. She said that if she knew, it would certainly kill her. As everyday, there were house searches being conducted by the SS. They would wake us up at night, everyone in the house had to gather in a single room and my mother, as a landlady, had to take all the keys and open all the doors. They would search everything – those two soldiers and an officer. My mother would go with them all the way up to the attic where the teacher was hiding this partisan in her room. It was on Sunday. The soldiers would search everything and then they would come to the door to the teacher's room. My mother said that the teacher wasn't married and she was spending Sundays at her parent's house, so the door was locked and she couldn't let them in, as she didn't have the key. My mother spoke good German, as she learned from a Jew, and Jews were quite pro-German, they all knew German very well. So she learned German at work and she spoke flawless German when talking with the officer. Also the doctor had a German name – Fridrich – so the officer would put his guard down. He would just wave his hand and send those soldiers away, he left the place with my mother and didn't want to have the door opened. If he would have it opened – he would let us shoot, as we were – each and everyone of us.”

“The Germans brought two hundred and fifty dogs, those German shepherds, quite experienced trackers. They also had experienced dog handlers. And the dogs would howl all night long, as they would lock them up all together, so we had many sleepless nights. In the morning, trucks would come, they would load all those dogs and soldiers and bring them somewhere. There they would surround this hill or some other place, so no one could escape from the forest. They would search the forest and catch partisans. Those were all young men who would run away from forced labour in Germany. At the end of the war, they would run away from Dresden, for example, after this horrific air raid, and they would walk all the way to Rožnov. And they were hiding, as if the Germans would find them, they would lock them up again. We met them, as they were carrying this boy, all tied up and covered in blood. There was this soldier on a motorcycle with a sidecar and in the sidecar, there was this boy.”