Miloslav Horníček

“When they started gathering and transporting Jews, they used trucks. They trucked them like pigs – I apologise for saying it like that. They drove the truck to Horní Square towards the stairs to the church, between the two houses. The trucks could reverse in back then; it has been changed since. Then they drew them onto the bed over the rear panel, and they were allowed to take about 50 kilos in their suitcases.”

“They [gestapo] had a shopping list, a purchase order for, say, ten kilos of meat. The German housewife didn’t check to see if there was half a kilo or a kilo less. That left some meat for my mother to give to Jewish families to help them out a bit.”

“That’s how they treated people – that’s what my dad got for working hard and being fair tradesman all his life. He had a car, a Škoda Popular cabriolet nicknamed “Liduška”, and was forced to drive the communists to meetings until late. They threatened to take it away from him for no compensation. That’s how they treated him. To retain the car, he agreed to drive them to meetings. Sometimes, he wouldn’t get home before two or three in the morning. He retained the car, but it was at the cost of his own self. He had to sit in the car and wait until the comrades’ meetings were over. And they even suspected him of unfair enrichment at the shop.”

“Hitlerjugend set up in Podhrad – there were girls aged up to 14. We had to relocate, and we carried books and hid them in the business school in Dusilov. Each of us got several books and carried them along the old road, from the high school to the business school. You remember this kind of experience. No cars were available, so we children were tasked with saving Czech books. In some books that they lent us, the place of origin had to be blacked out, even in catechisms. It couldn’t be ‘Made in Czechoslovakia’ – it had to be ‘Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.”

“It must have been in 1939, 1940. They took them all away. Those who were married to Aryans, meaning Roman Catholics of Evangelicals, were allowed to stay. All the genuine Jews were taken away. They loaded them in the square by the church door. There’s a flat area with stairs to the door, and they drove up with the truck, opened the sidewall as a ramp on the stairs, and Jews walked onto the truck bed like cattle.”