Libuše Gramišová

"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."

"We stayed there for three months. And it was very tough training indeed. We stood by the woods. We have been ordered to stay along the woods to get used to the hard conditions. Of course they put us into bunkers. It was raining so we slept in the bunkers. The ground was soaked with water... And the village was just ahead of us. We spent the whole training in bunkers. We all spent the training time in the woods."