Marie Kubínová

"One, if I may, I got an experience from those times, when I was with my father. My sister, I think, she was not with us. We were in Old Town Square and we heard the marching group members, the Hitlerjugend, like the Hitler's youth. They had short trousers and white socks, they carried a banner and they had, in fact it was music. They had whistles mainly, drums and marched accross the Old Town Square. My father had a hat on his head. So we just watched it. It always caused a little horror. And it happened that one of these young men came to my dad, so I reckon one of your age and knocked the hat off my father´s head and stamped on him. And it meant that when he heard the march, he should have taken it off. Of course, the father would not have done that, and he would not know why. Well of course, daddy was very upset and got angry. Then he pointed out to mummy: "Look what the Teutons have done to me." The hat really had marks all over."

"So we waited for the Red Army to come here. And a few days ... the fifth, the sixth, the seventh... a wagon with a straw came along; one was sitting on top with the horse cover. There was one Red Army member on top of it; he was like the Asian, not from European Russia at all. He to totally apathetic and tired. It was the precursor that other Red-Armenians coming next. This is what actually happened later. But they spoiled our bathing in the pond, because they were throwing grenades into that pond, the soldiers. All the fish that were swimming there got killed by the explosion of the grenade, and they actually caught them in this brutal manner. I doubt you could say fishing. After that for us, of course, it was May, quite a hot one in 1945, but for us the pond ceased to exist. They brought women with them too, we called them soldier women. And they also bathed there and we used to come and look at them and they had such a thing all over their bodies, well so the war was just hard for them. Sometimes they caught the farmer's cow and cut out the meat that was the best and left the cow as it was. The flies were then all over covering the dead body. It was really quite a disappointment, it could be said."