“There were mines in Kyiv, and the main avenue Khreshchatyk exploded just right in front of my eyes. Everything was on fire. I was afraid to go to sleep, because the streets were exploding every moment. The day after there was no running water, there was no electricity and there was no food. What was I to do? I started walking home to my mom, a distance of two hundred kilometers. We crossed the bridge, and behind it there were groups of people gathering, depending on the direction where they wanted to walk. Sometime somebody offered us a ride in a wagon, sometime we caught a ride in a cargo train. Eventually I was the only one who remained from the group of those who were heading for Monasteryshche. I arrived there, some people gave me a ride in a wagon and on the way I met my mother. She was jumping with joy. Thus I got there, in 1941. We spent the winter in very harsh conditions. The snow was one metre deep, and thee was no firewood, and mom was going from one cottage to another and begging at least for two potatoes. We had a small stove for charcoal. But there was nothing to cook anyway.”
“Then the bombardment by Americans began. They destroyed the factory where Czechs were working while our factory still kept operating. The Czechs were released, they were better off. But we were hungry, we were getting only a little slice of bread per day and soup which was like food for pigs, and nothing else. Just imagine, there were no sanitary pads, no bathroom, no hot water; can you imagine living like that for three years? One German beat me, because my machine got broken, and he claimed that it was sabotage, but it was no sabotage, the machine was simply broken. He beat me so hard that for half a year I lost hearing in my ear and my trigeminal nerve has been damaged. The Czechs were at least getting half a loaf of bread, and we desired nothing but bread. Seven of our girls went to hospital and they have not come back anymore. They said that they were going to hospital. We did not know that there were concentration camps. The seven girls have been taken there.”
Leonida Dobšová was born on April 14, 1926 in the village Monasteryshche in Ukraine. When she was eleven, her father was executed for alleged anti-state activity. Unable to feed her four children, Leonida’s mother sent her to live with relatives in Kyiv. While in Kyiv, Leonida experienced an attack by the German army in 1941. She survived and set out on a two-hundred kilometer journey home to her mom. When she reached the village, she found that German soldiers were executing all Jewish inhabitants. Leonida and a group of other girls were taken to Germany for forced labour. She worked in a factory for three years, and managed to escape in spring 1945. She got to Prague together with a group of Czechs and from there she planned to go by train to the Slovak border and then continue home to Ukraine. However, she went only as far as Valašské Meziřící because fighting was already underway at the border. She was given shelter in Zubri by a butcher. He and his whole family risked their lives, because it was forbidden to provide accommodation for strangers in the area. Leonida survived there until the liberation. She married and remained in the region. Later she learnt that her mother and siblings had survived the war. Leonida Dobšová died in 2018.
