Marie Lomská

“In 1939 the legionaries and the pilots from Bohemia came to us. They were accommodated in every Czech village. We had one pilot staying with us. When they came to town they always paid us a visit. Then they moved on to the Soviet Union.”

“There was an anti-Jewish pogrom. It wasn’t nice at all. It was not far away from the place we lived. They dug some pits and covered them with planks. Then they ordered them to stand on the planks and shot them down into the pits. It was terrible.”

“General Svoboda, Captain Drnek and my husband went to the observation point. I wanted to see it as well but my husband didn’t want to take me with him. Drnek told him: ‘Just let her come with us so that she knows what it’s like.’ From there I could see the line up of the forces. The rocket launchers, the tanks, the infantry. It was really dreadful.”

“My grandmother and grandfather came to Volhynia from Bohemia. My grandmother was about five years old, my grandfather about the same age. My great-grandmother came there with about four kids. That was the old Russia of the tsars. Of course, they settled there in the countryside, purchased some lands and the woods. They worked the soil in order to have something to live of. Then my mother was born there and my father a little later. My brother was born in 1913 and I was born in 1920 when it was already Poland. By then it wasn’t the Soviet Union anymore, but Poland.”

“The next day I went to the exercise. You know, you’re tired after a night of drinking and dancing. But my husband told me to go to the exercise, so I did. But as you’re holding the machine gun and you have to run and crawl, I got terribly sick in the middle of the exercise. At one point I couldn’t stand up anymore so the instructor came up to me and asked if I was alright. I then sat under a tree and relaxed. Of course they then sent me home. Afterwards the commander, Kratochvíl, was wondering how it was possible that my husband sent me to the exercise on the day after the wedding. But I said that if I hadn’t come to the exercise in the morning they’d have been grumbling.”