Milan Kašuba

“What was probably the worst was that in spring 1945 we were going to Petrov with mom and there was a children’s playground. It was not by some intuition, but we went home and bombs began dropping again. Fortunately, I am still here, as you can see, but from the children who were up there in the playground, none of them survived. So these are my worst memories that I can share with you. Therefore I think that if somebody says that there is only a small war somewhere, I always look at him and I think that he is probably not in his right mind, because experiences like that stay with you forever. And it is not necessary to discuss it any further.”

“My father played the accordion and he announced to me that I would start taking violin lessons. Obviously, violin was something unknown to me, and so he signed me up for violin lessons. I was there one or two times, and then I stopped going there. And of course, always when I was leaving the house, dad would ask me where I was going. I would say: ‘For the violin lessons.’ I would grab the violin case, hide it under a bench and play football instead, that’s logical. About three weeks or one month later, a letter arrived home, and I didn’t know about it. And dad asked me again: ‘Where are you going?’ I replied: ‘For the violin lessons.’ I took my violin and I went to play football again. I was playing football for about ten minutes and then my father stormed out of the bushes with a long leather belt, he bent me over his knee and he gave me a threshing right there in front of the other boys. I had to take the violin and go for the lesson. And later – my poor father is no longer alive, but he has lived quite long, until ninety-one – I told him: ‘Dad, I thank you so much that you gave me that beating, because otherwise I certainly would not have gone here. And thanks to you, I had that opportunity.’”