Irena Luxová

“They vented themselves on the Germans and tormented them. There’s a special place behind the graveyard. I know that the land there couldn’t be cultivated even under Communism. No one knew about it back then. It wasn’t in the graveyard but right behind the fence. They said four Germans were chosen from the village, and they had to dig their own grave before being shot. That’s the place where they’re buried. It wasn’t just in Horní Lipka, but in Mladkov as well, say, where they have a stone memorial. The same thing happened there. They shot some Germans there.”

“I then enrolled at a grammar school, but I had to stop after half a year, at the midterms, and go work in the fields because Mum didn’t go to work. She had little children to look after and couldn’t go to work. We had signed a big field off to the co-op, and Dad worked in the co-op on his own. So I had to go work in the fields. I ended school at the age of fourteen, so I wasn’t even fifteen yet and I had to go work in the UAC.”