"When [Dad] had to go to the JZD in 1953 or 1954 and he didn't want to, what they did was that they came and took all the grain from your granary, everything. Every farmer kept rye, wheat, flour for bread and they took everything. My mother shoveled, she shoveled for all of us in her lap, in her apron just enough rye for the next year. It was very sad."
"For example he [Dad] used to do it at night or in the evening, or when it was dark. He always had to spot when the Germans, finance officers, were crossing. When they crossed, he would let them cross for a long time, so that it would be... because the dog could smell them. So for example they were crossing, and because there were such bushes, such blueberry bushes, I know one time he was crossing, the dog somehow came back and started barking. The finance officer came back and the dad, the finance man... - there were two guys there, some guys -they ran away, they crossed over, they just hid there in that bush, in that blueberry bush. Dad was going back there and he had just got the pass, so they asked him, 'Where have you been?' He said, 'Oh, a cow wandered off, so I went to see where it was, to find it. And he [finance officer] said, 'Well, but be careful it isn't something else!' And he made an excuse, but because they knew he could, they left him alone. They left, then my father came back to them and transferred them, took them all the way to Stiavnik."
"It [the front] went through our place, there were then soldiers, Germans, in our barn everywhere. They had horses there, prisoners were digging trenches. There were Hungarians, Romanians, it was hungry, it was always coming... They wanted at least a potato or something. My mother's mother used to be there with us, an old lady we called her. So she scooped up the potatoes and brought it to them, and this one - I don't know who it was - so he caught it, he just grabbed the plate with his hand, he threw the potatoes down and she wasn't allowed to bring it to him."
Ludmila Krystyníková, née. Bartošková, was born on 12 December 1940 as the youngest of the six daughters of Josef and Anna Bartošková in the isolated village of Stodoliska in the pastoral settlement below Velký Javorník. The cottage where she lived with her parents and siblings was located right on the border with Slovakia. Her parents, originally from the vicinity of Velké Karlovice, moved there in the 1930s. During the war, Josef Bartosek’s father smuggled people across the border into Slovakia, supported the partisans and was involved in the resistance. His eldest sister Marie joined him and took people from the Karlovice railway station to Stodoliska. Due to the proximity of the border, the family also came into contact with smugglers. The older sisters brought smuggled cigarettes to the village where they exchanged them for goods that were needed. The family helped the partisans despite frequent checks by German patrols. Sister Marie joined the partisans and later married one of them, Vilém Kantor, who cooperated with the Jan Žižka Brigade. In 1945, her father moved to Třemešek as part of the resettlement of the borderland, and her mother and daughters joined him in 1947. After 1948 they lost everything, the property went to the cooperative, they were only allowed to work there. The father was in prison in Olomouc for several months, someone denounced him for not reporting the sow. Ludmila was not allowed to study, eventually she graduated from a two-year agricultural school in Libina and in 1960 she married Stanislav Krystynik. They raised four children. She and her husband worked most of their lives as caretakers at the Třemešek recreation center. After their marriage, they moved to Mladoňov, and Ludmila Krystyníková lived there in 2024, at the time of filming.
