Irma Garlíková

"I also rehearsed at the last All-Sokol meeting in Prague. It was no longer allowed, but the chief took us to Lidice. Back then, there were only the burnt foundations. She also took us to Lány to Masaryk's grave. So, we were happy. And because that was the first year Gottwald was elected. And we weren't allowed to shout... After all, President Beneš had to resign. The national head of Sokol came to the dormitory, we slept there in the gym near Vyšehrad, and she said: 'You mustn't shout in the parade: Long live President Beneš!, that would turn out badly.' Well, those were such turning points that it leaves a mark on a person, such a bad taste for the political happenings, because as a young person you can't explain why everything is like this all of a sudden."

"I saw how [the Gestapo and German soldiers] landed on that Hanáčkův rock track. We went to the store and saw the Germans going against the Křiby. That lasted all afternoon. Then some shooting was heard from there. They say, how - this was only known later - they went, that some of the guys were in the trees, they climbed up there, but that they couldn't see them. But they already had... there was a lot of snow then, so they saw some footprints. So, they were already shooting, as they say, blindly, into the air. And then from that bunker, I don't know if from that entrance, the four of them shot at them. So they shot the two and then captured the two and took the weapons from them. And then I saw the evening, it was already dark, it gets dark early in winter, as from Bohuslavice, it was called a big winter sleigh, it was pulled by a horse. And behind that there were still spruce logs, and on that lay some two figures, on that log. They were probably the dead ones. And the prisoners, if they were on that wagon, we couldn't see through the shop door, and we were afraid to go in front of the house, because the sledge were surrounded by German soldiers with machine guns. They brought them to the hall, there where the pub was. There they also brought the men from the village and wanted to know where the other partisans were. But no one told them anything."

"Before it happened [my father's release], my mother went to the Gestapo to plead for him that he was sick. And once she took me with her. The Gestapo had their headquarters where the department store is and the dormitories are there too, I don't know if it's the Garnia Hotel now. I remember exactly that it was behind the department store. And I was so curious, I wasn't afraid, so I went with my mom. The gatekeeper came to us immediately: 'Halt!', saying that the child is not allowed there. And I remained standing there and he turned around and another man came there for my mom, but he spoke Czech and was in civilian clothes. And so I slipped behind the back of the one who didn't want to let me in, and the other one let me go on. I remember, that Kraiger was terrible, but there was also one of the chief commanders of the Gestapo, his name was [Karl] Raschka, he was more corpulent, he was sitting behind that desk. Well, my mother tried to explain to him that the company is too much for her, that she could not handle it and that her husband was ill. He just shook his head, that's what I remember. He didn't answer her anything, nothing at all, and then he looked at his watch, said: 'Schluss' and we left."

"When we left the school, I think it was in the second grade, in the year 1942. Vlastek Nikl, whose parents owned a pub, was returning with me. Mr. Nikl was a butcher and a strong man. Well, he had a large number of weapons hidden. Those weapons got to the village from Zlín, there was the Sokol branch of the resistance movement, and they took many weapons to Březnice and they were hidden at Nikl´s place. We only knew that later. We were walking from school and Vlastek said: 'Hey, there's a German car parked near our place, it's the Gestapo.' So we went over the stream to the Kohn family's yard. That´s how saw how many Gestapo officers there were. Mr. Nikl had revolvers in boxes and had it buried where he cut the meat. There the floor was kind of trampled and he had the weapons there. Well, they told it and he was executed.'