Vladimír Mejstřík

“The morning came. It was a beautiful sunny morning and the tanks with Russians arrived. How we welcomed them! They were like kids. These Russians were just like kids. I was taking pictures of them, already at that time I had a small box camera, four by six and a half. I was photographing them. In the photographer’s shop they developed and printed the photographs for me immediately, and the soldiers were beaming with happiness when I brought the photos to them. They would have carried me in their arms. They would say: ´Davaj.´ (Give). Whenever they liked something, they simply said: ´Davaj.´ They had watches on their forearms up to their elbows. A watch was something of a miracle to them: ´Davaj časy!´ (Give me a watch). Well, they were raping women, and so on, that’s true, and when their officers saw them, they would shoot them. They had no qualms about it. Or he would kick him brutally. I saw it, I was in Újezd and a Russian stole a bicycle there. The woman who was the owner of the bike went to complain to the commander. He grabbed the soldier and he kicked him on the market square till he was all covered with blood. They didn’t value human life as much as we do today. And for an inexperienced child’s soul, who sees this for the first time, this is something which you then carry with you throughout your life.”

“During the entire war we never learnt anything about the gas chambers and the holocaust. The Germans were able to cover it perfectly. These atrocities committed by the Germans became known only after the war, and it significantly raised the hatred against all things German. Their expulsion from Czechoslovakia after the war was seen in the same way. It was viewed as a just punishment for them. And the postwar enthusiasm from being liberated, that was something amazing! While we were still in Prague, I joined a Boy Scout troop, whose members were my classmates. It was my first encounter with scouting, about which I haven’t known anything at all before. Before that, I only knew the Fast Arrows and their adventures (Rychlé šípy – popular Czech comics about a group of boys, transl.’s note). It was amazing. When the displacement of the Germans from the Czech territory took place, the radio was calling on Czech citizens to go and resettle the abandoned border regions. Our uncle, who had had to flee from there to Prague in 1939 because of the Germans, was returning there, and my other uncle – who worked as a switch-man, got transferred there to the railway station in Raspenava. Road signs, which had been written only in German before, had to be repainted. New company names for businessmen’s shops had to be written. Therefore it didn’t cost my relatives much effort to persuade my father to join them, and in summer 1945 we thus left Prague and moved to Raspenava. A whole new world opened for me. I completed the 4th grade of higher elementary there, and a one-year apprenticeship course, which was intended to make up for the war time. A Boy Scout troop led by the railway stationmaster from Raspenava formed there. An ample stock of material had been left behind by the Hitlerjugend: military tent canvases, brown shirts and black shorts, you just needed to add the Boy Scout belt and the scarf and hat. And as for our troop meeting room? The selection of abandoned rooms was incredible.”