František Pakandl

“The bombs they threw on Vitana, the communists used to say that Americans were responsible for it, for throwing them down. But these were Russian. But I already knew that a long time ago, as my father told me that the grandad, who lived here, where the farm was, now owned by the carpenter Válek. We were there. It was the number 129, and my great grandad and grandad were there. There was the machinery workshop. So grandad told him about the times they threw the bombs on Vitana´s reception. There were people gathered as a row of Germans was passing by and those people lined up and the Russians threw the bomb down and killed them all. And my old dad used to say those were no Americans, but Russians as he could see the red star on the wings. So I knew that when I was a little boy, that they did it. But you could not say that to anyone, that the Russians were responsible. I did know back then though. As my father told me that his father told him how he watched them fly over, he heard the noise as they were flying terribly low and he could see the red stars.“

“We arrived to the Eastern Germany up in Rujána, and from there we went to Trelleborg in Sweden; we had the cars loaded. But before we got there for three hours those Eastern Germans, they were using their mirrors, picking the loading canister, made us take almost all our clothes off almost naked. Well they enjoyed the bullying, it was terrible… We simply went to Trelleborg, we drove the cars, I had an Italian fiat, which was a pretty car at the time and we drove uphill. And there was Sweden, Finland, the borderline, a booth… We got there and were quite astonished… as there was no one there. So we stopped, looked around… and we drove on and there we were in Finland… then they made a sneak peak, when we wanted to drive to Germany. We went for our grandad, me, my wife and our son. And they allowed my wife to go, but not me. And my wife could not drive. It was a pure non-sense, I could not turn my head around it. So we left our boy back home and they gave me the permission and we could drive on.“