“…and then the year 1947 came and transports from Volynia arrived, they were going here to Žatec. At the railway station in Žatec, on the big building, there they had such a massive Stalin. And the Volynians said: ´Oh, we thought that we had escaped Joe, and he is here too.´ Well, we wouldn´t have left from there at all if all had gone back to the rails as it used to be, because we had there an arranged homestead, inspans, threshing-machines, binders…but we said, it had been all running around there after the WW1, there had been riots, troops, every ataman had wanted to have his own army, simply had wanted to manage by himself…”
“I got to a Russian first-aid station. I came there, it was such a bigger station, there the doctor bandaged me and said: ´You will go with the tankists.´ They were smashed up, lying on the cart, with horses they were driving them back, to the back. He gave me a snifter of vodka, such the glass like those from the mustard used to be, and he greased a piece of bread for me to get stronger. Good. They didn´t make any difference so as to say: ´It is a Czechoslovak, we won´t give to him.´ We were getting along with them quite well, so what. We were all in one bag, so we had to drag on together.”
“With them I didn´t have anything, with Germans, what there was, there was. And what with the civil ones, shall I somehow dicker with them, or what? So I was getting along with them quite well. The German (with whom T.D. was staying in a farm after the war) had a Czech for a mother and his father was German, he worked as a manager in an estate – and once he told me: ´I was born as a German and I will die as a German.´ And I said: ´But your Mum was Czech.´ ´Yes, but my Dad was German.´ Well, so German.”
“…there the Ťoks were and they had three girls, up to twenty years, so we used to go there. The old ones, their parents, were not at home, so we were sitting there, at that time they still used kerosene lamps – and suddenly two men burst into the room where the door was locked, and that we were to lay down on the floor… They were troops, they were going to pilfer, Ukrainians. They had there a field track, access from the forest and from there they had come and driven straight into the courtyard. The old Ťok was not at home and his wife neither, there were just us the young boys there and the three girls…and so they made us lay down on the floor – and so we were lying there on the floor, like pigs. They robbed it there, nobody knew anything because there was no electricity there, no street light, darkness. It was about eight o´clock and they were there nearly until midnight, they loaded it onto carts and left. And one more was standing under the windows and told us not to get up, stay down, not to make any noise. So they left, then we rose, so we got up and went home…”
“There were American sailors – and they got drunk with Russians – and the Russians lasted longer, of course, they were then carting them by the harbour motor boat to American ships.” “And did you yourself with them too…?” “…get drunk? Well, yes, but we were rather holding back a bit, a soldier, when he gets drunk, so what then, where shall he recover from the hangover… But the Slovaks, they roistered there then, they put there then hundred Slovaks, it was a Slovak army… and one of them, I don´t know what he had in the pub with the American, he was a strong man, but the Slovak, he was also a Jánošík (Robin Hood). He grasped the American and banged him against the door and the door burst open and he fell onto the pavement… And their captain was just walking past and they were both wallowing on the pavement, the American and the Slovak… And next day the commandant wanted to make a ´military service´ to us. Lining up, the Slovaks were separate and we were also separate, but we were like appended to the Slovaks. The captain went around the lined up soldiers and said: ´Who was drunk yesterday?´ Naturally nobody presented himself. It lasted for a while, but then it passed over – and then we left with a transport again.”
“The Ukrainians were building for them, the Germans, festival gateways from birches, and – Heil Hitler, Heil Ukraine. In our place there were those such students, those Ukrainian ones who were going to school in Lvov, but they had come from our village, well, so they were organizing it, in this way, they thought that Hitler would give them an independent Ukraine, that they would not be under Russia, that they would be independent when Adolf had promised it to them…”
“And we came into a village, and there was no garrison to be seen. Just an old one who had rheumatism and could not run too much. And we said: ´So where is your team, where are your boys?´ - ´They have just been here, they have just been here.´ Well, their guns were there piled up on the shelves and nobody anywhere – in a while they started to turn up, they had German girls there, so they had been making love, well… We said: ´Oh my God, you should have your guns at least hidden or locked somewhere, well, anybody can get in here, they can slaughter you here…´ Well, yes, … they were glad to survive…”
Full recordings
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Děčínský domov s pečovatelskou službou, 14.11.2005
Teofil Dražil was born on February 7, 1925 in České Noviny in Volynia. His father was a farmer. After the arrival of the Russians in 1939 he attended a Polish school. Dražil describes how the Nazis were welcomed by Ukrainians, and how that attitude gradually changed. After the Russian re-occupation of the region, he entered the Czechoslovak army. He went through the training in Besarabia, and was sent to the front in September 1944. He was injured almost immediately near Kobylany. Together with other injured soldiers, he was taken to Omsk, where he spent the winter of 1944/1945. In March he joined the army again. After the war he served in the Žatec region as a controller of local garrisons. Once completed with his commitment to the army, he worked shortly as an estate manager, and decided to settle in the Czechoslovak Republic. He lived in Jílové near Děčín until the death of his wife, and worked for the hydraulic structures company for 30 years. In 1997 he moved into an assisted living home in Děčín. He died on April 10, 2006.
