Olga Glierová

“We lost one of our pigs. We had to slaughter it so we had smoked meat and everything. And they came and took it all. They also took the clothes. My mother wanted to give the boys clean shirts on Sunday but they took everything from the wardrobe. Just a few pieces were left. They put it all in their sacks. They didn’t care if it was books or bacon. The boys were at the printers, so they had various books. And the soldiers took everything. And for me as small child, it wasn’t a nice experience what I saw that night and that morning.”

“The prisoners at the trenches had a small unit and they sabotaged things. They broke the pickaxes and didn’t dig properly,but they had to work because they had guards standing behind their backs. The name of their commander was Juraj. I heard about it. When digging the trenches was over, they were joined by a group of 17 escaped Soviet soldiers. They ran out of a death march from a concentration camp. They were transported on a train and they somehow managed to escape from it. They were hiding and later joined the guerrillas. Some of them were also hiding in our barn. My mother went to the barn and she saw the hay move. So she came back frightened that there was someone inside. My father explained her that it must have been the cats, but my brother Drahomír knew about it. He was hiding them. He helped them together with uncle Jan Ohera - they brought them food. The group later cooperated with the Juraj guerrilla unit and later with the Murzina unit from Walachia.”

Interviewer: “Why do you think that the military intervention from 18th April took place?” Glierová: “Because the soldiers were already here before people listened to the foreign radio at the Plánička family's house. Guerrillas came to listen...Well, it was out in the open. They would put the radio up loud. It was in the village so we knew nobody else could hear it. But the Germans and the SS men must have been there too. My father said that Mr. Ohera, who had been wounded in the attack, asked one of the soldiers for a cigarette and complained about the pain. But the soldier refused: ‘Suffer! Yesterday you gave bread to the guerrillas.’ So the day before, the soldiers must have been there.” I: ”And do you think that the fact they were hiding a Jewish family also played a role?” G: “Sure. There were guerrillas here, but there were also those four people who always took walks in the night. The attack would probably take place even without the Jews. But I think that it was the icing on the cake as some would say.”

“A rocket grenade exploded in our yard as they were approaching down the street. Drahomír was in a latrine which was out of the house. He couldn’t run into the house so he was crawling. My father wasn't at home; he was with the Skopal family up the hill. Then the bells went out and our neighbour, Mrs. Vrzalová, was banging at the window,‘Fire! We have to put it out!’ My mother didn’t want to let the boys go, but they insisted, so she finally let them. That was at ten o’clock. They came back in the morning. Our father came first. The soldiers let all the men older than fifty go. He asked my mother where the boys were. ‘They are at the fire.’ My father put his head in his hands and lamented: ‘That’s really bad', thinking that they were captured. But they didn’t see Zdeněk who was near the footbridge and Drahomír managed to hide under the bench.”

“It was quite calm here. The shooting took place at the other end of the village. Three Russian soldiers were wounded, one of them fatally,so they buried him in our yard under a pear tree. He had an army funeral with all the honours but he was buried in a sheet. No coffin or anything. We didn’t know and still don’t know his name. The grave was in our garden for two years. Flowers grew on it and it had a wooden Russian star that was made by the people in Zákřov. We would commemorate him with flowers and lit a candle after the mass. Two years later, they dug him out and took him to Olomouc. We never found out who it was. This is how we remembered the liberation.”