Viktor Hnízdil

“Dad was a horse dealer, and we’d have, say, fifty horses in the barn before the harvest. Dad traded them, but he had help. He had his people, who sold them at bazaars. Those were practically every day. Dad would just go and watch, but when someone bought his horse, no one knew it was from Hnízdil, because there was a lot of cheating going on in horse dealing. Say, horses who had just one egg [sic], they were called ‘nenter’, they were a nasty sort. They wouldn’t stand any other horse, they’d bite and kick and do all kinds of things. But such horses look beautiful. What to do with them? So you’d buy a litre of vodka before the bazaar started, you’d pour that down its throat, and it’d sleep. It’d stand there and you could touch it all over, and it wouldn’t so much as budge. You had to sell it [before the alcohol wore off - trans.], and you’d sell it well, and the person who sold it had to make himself scarce before the horse woke up. Once it’d been bought, that was that.”

“The worst thing was when the Germans came and made a ghetto in Ostrožec and fenced it up. Then the Jews knew things were bad, so they tried to flee. They fled into the forest because there’s a big forest between Ostrožec and Kneruty, they dug themselves a hole and hid. That was stupid because they wouldn’t have lasted long in it anyway. Come winter, they’d be gonners. A few of the families were holed up in those hideouts and would come to Kneruty for food in the evenings. But the Germans knew about it, and so they issued a statement that if anyone gave any food to a Jew, they’d murder the whole village. So no one dared do it. Ukrainians, Banderites, Jews, and secret agents made the rounds of the villages, and no one knew who they were. One time in 1943 a Jew came to us, and I recognised him. It was just me, Mum, and my sister at home. He wanted some bread, but we couldn’t give him any because we were afraid. So I shoved him, but he held on. So I shoved him harder, knocked him out of the doorway, and then banged the door shut. So he went to the Czechs, where the teacher lived [she taught in Český Malín - ed.], but they didn’t give him anything either. He went into their barn and hanged himself there.”