Alena Matuštíková

“The neighbours met after Christmas to pluck feathers. Back then, they turned off the electricity quite often, so we were sometimes plucking by the candlelight, so it was even more interesting. I remember that as soon as I started attending school, I used to go plucking feathers with my mum. The more people came, the fewer days it lasted. We went about a week into one house. It depended on how many geese they kept and how many times we had to pluck them. It prolonged according to that. I remember that sometimes there were thirteen or fifteen women. The men were not there. Only when we were at our place, my grandfather was sitting behind the oven. And it used to be very merry. Some older ladies used to go there only to entertain us. To narrate old stories. And we used to sing. So many ballads! We mainly sang religious songs about Paradise, Adam and Eve, or saints. We would sing and those were joyful moments.”

“It was the day when the front was approaching Sudice. The planes were flying and dropping bombs. When they flew away and it was quiet, I and my dad went out of the cellar. It was necessary to clean the stable. We could see as far as Osmilany, the Russians were already coming from one side. But there were still three Germans on motorbikes behind Jašek's garden. They had machine guns and were shooting at them. They kept the front for the entire hour. Then the Russians created an extended order in the field. There were many of them. The Germans fired a few more shots and rode off on that motorcycle. But I saw one of the Russians get killed. I saw a soldier killing another soldier. I felt like crying. Three Germans were lying there in the morning and a killed Russian soldier was lying there in the afternoon. Then we had to go back to the cellar because the tanks were already entering Kobeřice.”