Jiřina Hloušková

“I was working in Vítkovice and I was returning from work. The shift ended at ten and then we waited for the train departure at eleven. As we rode in the train, in Lískovec they hanged two people from Benešov. They had done something, but on the whole they were innocent people, I would say. But that was what Germans were doing. They hanged them between Místek and Lískovec and we had to get off the train there at night at twelve o’clock and we took each other’s hands and we had to pass by the hanged men and look at them. They were hanging there and the place was only dimly lit by a lamp. The Germans wanted to scare us by that.”

“We suffered a lot. In Vítkovice, the shelter where people were hiding was buried under debris. I, my friend, and the foreman have saved ourselves, but all the other people from the workshop died there. A bomb fell there, and it buried everyone in that shelter. The air raids were usually around eleven o’clock, and at the beginning we liked that. If there was an air raid, we would get out and go out in the street, there were houses and a meadow and free space behind them. The air raid would take a while and we would sit down and watch the airplanes flying. Then all of a sudden those houses began to fall down! The guy who was delivering material to us got killed there, and I and one more friend ran into the shelter. At that time, those airplanes began bombing all of a sudden. That was for the first time. We were sitting under a fence and there was a shelter and so we ran there, but the guy stayed there and it killed him.”

“We were campaigning for the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives with Rosťa. We were visiting the village houses. Some people agreed with it, some did not, there were all kinds of people. We came to Hejda’s house. They were really poor, and there was even their grandma living with them, a poor woman, too. Rosťa explained it to them, what it would be like and what it involved. They were listening. As we were to leave, when he had already explained them everything, this old grandma knelt in front of Rosťa and said: ´Teacher, you are such a good man. Do not make my son get even poorer than he already is.´ I ran away. I told Rosťa that I would never go with him again and I would never do this again. He began explaining it to me, telling me that it would be fine. And it was. People in the cooperative were doing very well. This Mr. Hejda eventually worked as the cooperative’s chairman. He came to me and he even thanked me. As I said, it was a terribly difficult time.”