Oľga Domanická

"I don't remember that much before the war. I was with my mom and dad when we were doing something, but I don't remember doing any hard work. What a four-year-old child. I just hung around them. It wasn't until something was happening somewhere, when the planes started flying, that they already told me that there would be a war. I was afraid of it after that, because they were already dropping bombs, it was flying here, we just always ran to those cellars to hide. German soldiers came and told us that the upper part of the village would be burned. So they took us and put us in such meadows. We took what we could to have something to sleep in, some duvets and a wain. So we had to hide there and stay in those meadows. That was 1944/45. The whole village was occupied by the Germans. We could lay down on the grass there, it was called Ponds. I remember not being able to sleep, I kept waking up. Our parents were keeping an eye on me and the little one, and I saw how the Germans were watching us on their horses to make sure nothing happened. We were there for about two days. Then they told us to divide into families at the lower end of the village, that there should be no burning. So the families from the lower end of the village took in whom they could from the upper end. And then we stayed with one such family and we cooked there."

"No one lived there, only those soldiers came there and killed us as much as they could. Once such Germans came and wanted to kill a pig. They came and told my father, I was also standing there, watching. They told the father to go get a knife to kill him. So that they have something to cook. Well, father said that he didn't have such a long knife so he couldn't butcher him with just a short knife. He said that he has no other knife. The German pointed a gun at him and said that he was going to shoot him. That he (the father) does not want to have him (the pig) killed. But the sister, the oldest, knelt down in front of the German and begged him not to shoot the father, that we didn't have such a knife, that she was going to the neighbors, that they would borrow the knife and that she would bring it to them so they could slaughter the pig. And so it happened. She went, they lent us a knife, father butchered the pig, did what was necessary with it so that they could cook. Then when we got home we had nothing. They have already taken everything from us. We still had the horse that my father used to carry meat to the partisans.