Marie Henzlová

When we were in the first class, imagine that Germans moved into our class, and there were probably a lot of them and so on. And we had to leave that class. And behind that classroom was a cabinet, you could say, or a room where we had a piano. And we went there through the cabinet, which was full of all kinds of stuffed animals. And we learned there. And now it was glazed. And the director covered the whole area with papers so that we couldn't look at the Germans. That was probably the order he got. And, when we went to that school, the headmaster told us, just to protect us, that as we came to that corridor, because that corridor was full of those Germans too, that we had to salute: 'Heil Hitler.' They had to raise their hand and say: 'Heil Hitler.'' Because back then, if it hadn't been, I don't know what would have happened to the director or to us... I don't know. That is the way it was. But we knew it was a wrong, the wrong greeting.'

"Daddy was simply not allowed to return home, it was strictly controlled in such a way that he was not allowed to leave that village or that... But of course, dad couldn't be without us either, so he ran away in secretly; he managed to get out of there travelling in all kinds of cattle trains, where he saw that the gendarmes or the Germans who are checking were not there... And many times, when he got to Jihlava, he saw for example, that they were looking around, that they were walking around the station, so he jumped out of the wagon on the other side and for example, he would walk home from Jihlava, all the way to Řišť. He would come back and my mother would always say: 'Oh dear, there is so much bombing there. Aren't you afraid in Vienna? Take care of yourself.' Because my mother was very caring."