Emilie Marková

“Did you have some spare time to have some fun at the battlefront?” “There was no time for any organized life but yes, everyone needs to take some time off every once in a while. You needed to take some time for yourself to relax and rest. We chatted and we laughed just like any other young people do. When you’re young you don’t allow yourself to admit that something might happen to you. Only when you get older you stop and think for a moment and then you say to yourself: “how in the world could I have survived all of this?”.”

“There were Ghettos even where we lived. I can’t even speak about it. I didn’t see them personally but I heard the rumors. The young lads got everywhere and then they were telling their stories. The Jews had to dig their own graves, get undressed, line up in front of the pits and then they were mowed down by machine-gun fire. The Germans then covered the bodies with a thin layer of chlorine lime and the next round of killing followed. Like the sheep… All of this was happening just some four kilometers away from the airport that we were building. But I don’t remember anymore when it was exactly. The graves were partially buried with soil – there were limbs sticking out from the earth… when we went to the army they kept showing the open graves to us. I don’t really know why, probably to harden our hearts.”

“Did you return to the Soviet Union after the war or did you stay here?” “I stayed in Czechoslovakia. However, I went to a visit to the USSR when I got a six-week leave in July. It was much worse there then it was in Czechoslovakia. The level of culture was much lower there. I’ve never gone there afterwards. I only visited the site of the Dukla battle three times and I’d love to go again but I’m not capable of it anymore.”

“It wasn’t easy for us. We were surrounded by trenches already in the first war. My mother had to work hard to feed the family because my father had to go to war. At this time my parents already had four children and, on top of it, my grandparents lived with them! So you see, my mother had a lot of hungry mouths to feed but few hands to help her.”

“I’m rather the kind of a person who prefers to back down in time, so I didn’t have any problems. In addition to that I worked in the hops-house where you had to work hard manually. No one envied my job so I didn’t get into trouble with anybody.”