“She came to my place and said,´They don't want me in Mlynov …´ – it had been freed by then – ´they just don't want to let me in my house. There is a military office.´And they had a very nice house – it is still there. So she said she had nowhere to live and so I offered she could stay with me. She had been staying there before I went to the front. When I told her I was going to war, she considered that and said, ´I would like to go too – what do you think about it?´ But I replied, ´No, Rachel, you mustn't go. You are the last of your family – there is none of your family left, you are the only one who survived.“
„I saw Vlasta Vyhnálková, a nurse, in the newspaper. And I told her,´You must have been in the newspaper!´And she replied,´I don't know about that.´ So I told her about that and she asked, ´You haven't been here for a long time, have you?´ And then she, a good-natured person, started to get angry. ´They are putting new nurses everywhere but in here there is no-one.´ And so I asked,´Do you need anybody? Are you with the injured?´ ´Yes,´she said,´ we are in the department that looks after those who are in bed.´ And so I offered her,´I might go there if you need anyone.´ And so I asked the officer to go to the injured.“
„We had to pass Krosno to get to Wrocanka. And these were the villages where there had beed furious fights. I was not right there – we were about two kilometers from there and they were bringing the injured. And when we were going out of the forest passing Krosno, we saw a burning train at the station and the Germans running nearby. So we could see the Germans from our place.“
“It was just pieces of flesh. Arms and legs, amputated. It had to be cut off. The injured flesh must be cut off – it cant be there. We had several gangrenes in Świerzowa Polska. It meant amputations as the gangrenes proceeded. Blood poisoning – but infectious blood poisoning – and very infectious. Such a person with gangrene was not allowed to be together with other patients. There were not so many people with such gangrene – I just remember one very well: it was an officer from Yugoslavia.“
“There were two soldiers and a driver to go to collect the injured. And in the morning an angry officer called our officer and threatened to report him to general Svoboda because no help had arrived. But our commander said,´I have sent an ambulance!´And so another ambulance set off and when they arrived, they saw the first ambulance but no soldiers. And then they noticed a hole there and there was a military pot and then the corpses of Yuriyev and the two others. They probably wanted to make a meal and set the fire on an anti-tank mine. They hadn't known about it and the heat had got too deep and it exploded and killed them.“
photo: Dobová: z roku 1945, Současná: Ze setkání válečných veteránů
photo: Dobová: z roku 1945, Současná: Ze setkání válečných veteránů
Download image
Irena Malínská, née Šmidtová, retired colonel, was born on 9 May 1925 in Mlynov in Volhynia. Mlynov was predominantly a Jewish town and thus when Volhynia was occupied by the Nazi Germany, a ghetto was created there and then the inhabitants were liquidated. The pogroms affected also the family of one of Irena’s friends, Rachel, who was luckily saved. After the Red Army had arrived, Irena was forced to work as a secretary of a Soviet authority, rajpartkom, which searched for collaborationists. In April she joined the emerging Czech army corps; she worked as a nurse. She looked after the injured during the Battle of the Dukla Pass. After the war she studies at military medical school. In 1947 she was arrested and interrogated in connection with an espionage affair in Most. Her brother, Ladislav, was arrested in 1948 and a year later he was sent to prison in the trial with Judex’s anti-communist resistance group. She was in the army until 1968 - then she had to leave because of her activities in the radio. She retired but still worked as a tour guide for Čedok travel agency. Nowadays she is an active member of Volhynian Czechs Association, Czechoslovak Association of Legionnaires and Czech Association of Freedom Fighters. She lives in Prague. She died on 15 June 2012 in Prague.
