Růžena Horáková

(Q: “How many of you were there?”) “Three boys and two girls.” (Q: “And how did you arrange it?”) “Those boys were the ones we knew, who went to dancing lessons with us, we went on trips together. So we arranged that the boys would take a two-litre bottle of liquor, they said: ‘We need to fortify ourselves for the journey.’ Of course, we didn’t dint it much, but the boys... They took us a bit of the way, and then stop, the train doesn’t go any further. Onwards over the borders by foot.” (Q: “They didn’t check documents in those days?”) “They did.” (Q: “That must have been dangerous.”) “Maybe - the train ended there, but they had the advantage that I spoke perfect German, so when someone spoke to us, I answered in German. So we always scraped through somehow. And there was another train leaving from our side, and this time the conductors helped hide us, they watched out for us and when necessary we switched wagons - and in this way I reached Pacov.”

“We were on the main street, and then air raid and off went the sirens. So we rushed into the tallest building there was, because we reckoned: ‘They’ll blow up the top floors, the lower ones might survive.’ So we rushed inside and there was a bomb shelter there, but there was an antechamber in front of it. The shelter was already closed and we got into the antechamber. There were some nuns there and us two girls who had rushed in. Suddenly silence, we said: ‘Well hopefully it will be okay and nothing will happen.’ But on the contrary, the plaster started crumbling, I said: ‘Oh dear.’ The house got a hit from the side like this. Such a deathly calm, you couldn’t even imagine, maybe in some sealed chamber. So we were there, we couldn’t get out, we were buried under the rubble. They only said they found us, I don’t know how many hours it took them, but they got us out of there.”