Hynek Horčička

"It was the end of the war, May 9, the mayor organized a big celebration in the village, in every village they did it. A parade, a band. And now the soldiers who were still here, the officers and non-commissioned officers were paired up with the girls from Vrbice. The parade, as we walked, up the village and into the church for mass. And there's a monument in that upper park, about four metres high, with the names of forty-five men who died in the World War I. So now we got to that park, and we boys right away, so we could see well, so our heads were poked out, there was concrete, and then there was a wire fence around it, pretty. So now there were two soldiers designated to fire a volley. So only the Czechoslovak anthem was played, they knew it. So now there was a salvo, a roar, short three bursts, and that was fun for us boys, and now. Suddenly one girl fell down on the ground - and we boys: 'Well she was scared by that shooting.' She was lying for a while, nothing moved. The girl's lying down – and it started. Dead. The officer, he just wasn't authorized to shoot. But he did pull the trigger, and he was standing behind her, behind the girl, behind the girls. He shot her right in the head and it went out through her forehead. And she was dead. And the celebration was over, the music was over, the whole Vrbice was in mourning. Now we thought they were gonna shoot the officer there."

"It was about eleven o'clock at night, at half past eleven, and two came to the cellar and the girls were buried under the covers, not even breathing, and one of the soldiers, I remember, sat on a box in the cellar and started telling us things, and he had a sabre. He had his sabre out and he was talking to us very nicely, and we boys had to try how he had it sharpened. And all of a sudden, well he kept looking back into the cellar, and briefly a girl coughed under the covers - and that was it. He threw the duvet away, and the girls were there. He went out nicely and they had already checked it out. And at night, the first two, it was ten or eleven o'clock at night, into those covers, and they had a flashlight, and they dropped the covers, and the prettiest one, the youngest one, they went and pulled her out. She started wailing, and they pushed her out of the cellar, and she was wailing, poor thing, and she was there for an hour and a half, and she came and she was completely beaten up and wailing. Half an hour later other two came. They did it in a clever way, they went from the fields to the back of the houses, they didn't have to cross the village, so they wouldn't meet the commander somewhere. And now in the morning, the owner, uncle Kostiha, said they'd find the commander. They (the soldiers) by morning, before it was light, the cossacks were prepared, mounted, and before we all got out, were gone from Vrbice."