Věra Fexová

“I remember waking up on May 1 in the morning and we were looking forward to being off work. I came down, and looking out of the window and saw that there was snow outside. On May 1, 1945, the snow was falling, I remember it by now. As I looked out of the window, I saw a German soldier walking down the street towards us. And he, when he saw me looking out of that window, he started heading to us. I do not know, what he thought. He came and, of course, spoke German asking, if any of us spoke German. My mother did not; well I remembered something from my German classes. So I tried to talk to him. And he explained to me that he came, because they brought in mainly Russian prisoners, who were lodged in the barns of that courtyard, which was at the castle. And he wanted to cook food for them. And he saw a large electrical boiler in our courtyard, where we were cooking for the hens. He wanted me to go with him somewhere, where he could get another pot, so that he would have some food for the prisoner.”

“Well then, when there was a rebellion in Prague and the end of war was near, I thought it would happen so that the Germans would run away. I thought the guys guarding those Russian prisoners fled. But then, it's been a couple of years back, when I learned that as the Revolutionary Guards were established, they killed those Germans. They are buried there somewhere outside the cemetery. I did not know that, they did not tell me, I only learnt from a girl, who returned to Brno. She was a sister of my friend, and told me, when she found out. The prisoners lived there until the end of the war. And when the Germans fled or just disappeared, we could take the prisoners home. Because they had to stay there until May 17 and wait for an evacuation to get back home. In order to avoid having to feed them in the buckets, we each took some of them and brought them to our homes. So I brought two Russian prisoners and two Australians back to our home.”