Libuše Gramišová

"We got beaten up there in Dukla. We were accommodated in a huge house when they started to fire. One German soldier was sitting on top of the factory roof giving precise information about the location of our soldiers. Their hits were precise. They burst into our kitchen and everything there was in the air, including our cook and everyone else around. Then we moved to some old fashion building with very thick walls. I’m not sure what whether it was some mansion or some kind of bureau. When they started the fire, we must have laid down by the walls to eliminate the danger. We could’ve been hit by the windows. We used the crossbars to close the windows. Everything inside was shaking. I wasn’t even scared that much. Young people see everything with different eyes, they are not afraid of anything."

"I was twelve when the war started. The life was no longer easy there. You know, Poland went down in 1939. In only fourteen days. Then the Russians came and took over half of our territory. The Germans took the second half. Our parents were rather rich. The Czechs used to be very hard working people, usually the worked on the farmstead. They owned 20 acres of land; therefore they were called the kulaks (independent farmers - translator’s note). The Russians stayed there for two years when the Germans attacked them. Three days later we were supposed to be on the Siberia transport. It’s embarrassing to say so, but the Germans saved us. We would have been died in Siberia."

"We knew that there was also our army fighting there. So we decided to leave everything here for them. And when the army came in April of 1944 I have entered the army too. The committee came and all of us aged 16 to 60 years - men and women went to the army. We went abroad (To Volhynia - editor’s note), but we fought as patriots. But we remained Czechs. I entered the army when I wasn’t even 17 yet."