“Christmas was not celebrated. It was forbidden to celebrate Christmas. We did celebrate New Year, though. On the New Year´s Day we would have a jolka, a tree, in the middle of the classroom. We would move the desks to the walls, the tree was decorated and it was reaching nearly to the ceiling, and we would be dancing around it. But nobody was allowed to have a Christmas tree at home. I remember that on one Christmas Eve, the teacher came to our house. I remember we did have a Christmas tree once. A bell rang and we children went to look, and there was the Christmas tree in granny’s room. And this guy came, I don’t know whether it was the teacher or somebody else, and one of the Czechs who were there says: ´Hey, Josef, what do you keep in that room over there? You don’t heat that room or what?´ But he did not come because of that. He came to check whether we had any Christmas tree by chance. Nobody was allowed to have one.”
“We stayed in that village for about a week and then we had to move. There was a forest all along that village, and so they moved us into this forest. And we had to build bunkers for ourselves. But the guys from Volhynia did not help us much, since we joined the army because of the guys. So we, young girls, had to do it ourselves, we were cutting trees, cleaning the trunks, digging a hole, about three steps below, and then putting the beams over it. Perhaps somebody was telling us how to do it. I don’t remember. So we cut the beams, put them across this hole, then threw some ground over it, and that was it. We had such bunks inside the bunker, and over them we put some blankets and that was how we were sleeping.”
“They were fleeing from there, I remember that my sister’s classmate was one German girl. I think they were in the second or third grade at that time. And the Germans were among the first ones who had to be disposed of. The farm owners and the Germans. The Germans were dealt with first, and then the farmers, or the other way round, I don’t remember anymore. And my sister’s friend and her family had been teaching my sister German. By the time she was ten, my sister learnt to speak German. I still remember it. And this German family wanted to escape one night, and they shot them all. The whole family. Including the girl. No one dared to take the risk. Nobody knew where they were and where they were watching you.”
“Every adult had to pay a tax for living in Dědova Hora, they had to pay three hundred rubles. And their daily wage was one kopeika. They had to sell whatever they could, just to be able to pay, simply for being alive. And there were three of them. Dad, Mom, and grandmother. Till 1940. And every week they would go to Slavuta to sell things, like apples, and such. In the beginning we had huge orchards. There were apples, and cherries, I don’t know how much we had. And they were bringing all this to Slavuta. On Sundays, the kolkhoz would lend them horses and they would go there and sell the fruit.”
“About my father. They asked those who were Czechs or Poles to enlist. So he did and he went to the front line. And I went to see him when they were near Slavuta, or it was Šepetovka. Yes, it was in Šepetovka, which was already near the front, and they were changing into the military uniforms. We brought them food there. Dad came to me, he was already wearing an army shirt. We only spoke for a while. ´And take care for your Mommy, above all.´ That was the last time I saw him. We boarded a military train, which was to take us back, and that was the last time I saw him. I remember the belt he had. He was a Russian soldier, simply. And somewhere behind Šepetovka they drove them to an open field. I know that Šircl was there. He survived. He had also been with my dad in WWI. He came back with his son, Saša. They came here and he tells me: ´I saw your dad. I turned him around and there was no blood on him. He was dead.”
Helena Mrázová was born April 20th 1926 in Dědova Hora in the Soviet part of Volhynia. A kolkhoz was established in the village on May 21st 1930. Her parents’ farm and all machinery were appropriated to the state and they themselves were forced to join the Kolkhoz. People from the village including a part of the family were deported to Gulags. Holidays, which had been observed before, became forbidden, and parents were even afraid to speak in the presence of their children, for fear of being accidentally turned in by the children in school. As a child, Helena Mrázová was helping in the household and attending school in Dědova Hora and in nearby Krivín. In 1944 she was to go to work on reconstruction of coal mines in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, but she avoided this by joining the 1st Czechoslovak army corps in April 1944. She enlisted in the village of Rusová and she was assigned to a tank brigade as a radio operator. She was not involved in direct combat; she mostly stayed behind the main front, where her duty was maintaining connection between the commanders and the tanks. She passed through Dukla, the end of the war found her in the Ostrava region. She there fell ill and had to recover for one month. After the war she moved to Šumperk, where she was working in the Moravolen factory and later in the ČSAD bus company as a conductor. Helena Mrázová passed away on July, the 26th, 2014.
