Eva Lízalková

“We thought we were safe, now that they’d stolen everything. But a Russian came over some three days later, he looked a bit Mongolian. He opened the gate, entered our yard and yelled: ‘Watches! Watches!’ My mum was really angry, she was not scared and said they’d stolen everything and there were no more watches. He understood. He said Russian soldiers never steal, took out his gun and wanted to shoot her. It scared me; I jumped in front of her and said: ‘Shoot us both if you must.’ That stopped him; he put the gun away and said he’d come back in the night to sort it out. I was scared and went to report it to their headquarters. The major who was in charge said he knew him and would take care of it. That Russian never came back, so we stayed alive. Later on, I learned that they took him to Hranice and shot him because he was the worst of them all.”

“When the Russians came, they asked the people who could speak Russian about who lived where and what they owned. Someone told them they could find something in our place. So, someone rang the doorbell at 10 pm on a weekday. My brother answered the door, and six Russians came in with automatic rifles. They put us in one rooms, five Russians stayed there with us, the guns in their hands, and the sixth one pointed the gun at my brother’s back and ordered to show him round. He took everything that was of any value. When they left, we e had nothing, not even my student watch that had been on the bedside table. They would wear six watches at once, they called them “chasy”, and they could never get enough. They took everything; mostly gold and jewels. When they had taken all of that, they went to the pantry where we kept supplies from the pig-killing – pots of lard, smoked pork, and so on. Everybody had that in the village. They grabbed the pots of lard, took the meat, slurped the eggs raw, stomped the egg shells into the ground and left. They would have taken our car as well, but the Nazis had taken the tires away before, so it was immobile, and the Russians left it. When they left, the house was left virtually empty. Of course, the furniture stayed, but everything of any value was gone.”