Helena Havlíčková

“He was a dictator, right. It was all so surreal that he could control his nation like that and everybody followed him and all this, it was all so incomprehensible for us. But by the will of God, we have somehow survived it all. We had a smaller villa outside of Brno, in Veverská Býtíška. When the war was drawing to an end we all went there. Dad was no longer alive at that time. We actually experienced the end of the war there, and it was horrible, too, because soldiers simply came there – the villa was up on a hill, and they came there and took over the house and they began to use it as their accommodation. Tanks arrived to the meadow. It was scary and we slept there on the ground. Germans came in and they were looking for partisans there. As we were lying there, they were stepping over us in their boots and they were stepping over us and still searching and searching. They went there with certainty, they went to search the place. Americans or Englishmen were deployed there from airplanes, I don’t know if they were Americans or Englishmen. The owner of the lodge saved one of these pilots. He hid him in the basement under a heap of coal. But we didn’t know about it. The Germans kept searching for him. They knew that he parachuted somewhere there. They came and they searched for him, and we had to show our identification cards to prove who we really were. They eventually left, but they spent about half an hour in the house. The owner then came there. He urged everybody who was there to quickly come and help. We didn’t know that the airman was hidden there. They helped him get out from the heap of coal and they knew that they needed to hide him somewhere else because it was dangerous. The Germans only did a cursory search. And then they really came back for the second time. There were the owners, and there was some leader of partisans among them as well, and they organized the rescue. They led the pilot out from the basement and they sent him away in a little boat. There was a river with a mill-race that passed through Býtíška, and the river forked at that place. They hid him in the boat. But it was literally in the last minute, because the Germans came back and they searched in the basement again. The men have thus saved the pilot. Later they left, but they took my husband with them to show them the way. We were all terrified because they could have shot us all to death, one by one, but we have survived.”

“Do you know how to live? Be humble and take life as God gives it, you know. Those who aim high fall deep. To live an ordinary human life and treat other people like this. You know, to really live such a life of humbleness and faith. As long as you have it and have something to believe in, it gives you strength to overcome everything, all the pain and all the turbulent times and everything. And this was what has kept me going, this upbringing from my parents. Throughout my entire life, really. You know, the way we lived was still… When we sat down to dinner, there were seven of us. We always had to say a prayer, and then we had to start eating. My father was well situated financially, but we never asked him for anything, and we had to wear dresses from my older sister, for example, although he could have bought me three new dresses like that. You know, we have been brought up like this. Differently than it is now.”

“On the second or third day I walked to the other village away from Bítýška to fetch bread, because we didn’t have any and we hoped that I would be able to get some bread there. My husband had to go with them to dig trenches. I went to get bread, but Germans caught me there. They stood around me and they surrounded me. They asked me where I had been. I said that I went to buy bread. No bread was available, and so I didn’t carry any. Luckily I had my identification card with me. They thought that I was a partisan. It was a terrible feeling, because they were aiming at my head with submachine guns. I think they would have killed me. But they were in a hurry, they were already fleeing. They eventually let me go. Well, but the experience was something you cannot even imagine. It was horrible. You lived in fear all the time. And you never knew what would happen the next day. It was terrible; I was still young, you know. I really believed that they would shoot me because they didn’t care. But they somehow talked it over and then they motioned to me to go. They told me in German to go away. Schnell, to go quickly.”