Jiří Pavlica

“Only the revolution, the end, that was in Frýdek, but the five years of war or how many, I spent those at Bílý Kříž… And I had no friends on our side, only on the Slovak side because there was a road leading around our house and that was also the border – Kysuce hotel today, up there, the former Baron, so there the Germans had a border patrol station and they set up booths, later towards the end of the war they even built a wired fence four or five metres tall up to that rock down there… So I would always go to the boys… And some of them at the border, they patrolled mainly at Bílý Kříž, they were usually Austrians, from Vienna or so, who [hadn’t made it] to the front, older guys, not in the leading positions because I know those were tough, but the older guys they would always say: “Schoo, schoo, you not, you kan’t go zhere or boom boom at you!””

“We were in the basement and suddenly there was this roar from upstairs: “Raus aus dem Keller!” So all of us had to get out and there was this…that was the first time I saw a man with foam at the mouth they were completely… A machine gun and it seemed like he was going to shoot us right there, we were pushing our way up the stairs because apart from us there were two more tenants, so the families as well, actually there were three families, and what happened was that either a tank or a cannon launched a missile that hit our house and shot through the load bearing walls and half the house fell down, which made the guy run away and leave us there, he left us there and we went back to the basement. ”

“There was this wooden house next to us, some Mrs. Šostíková lived there, she was an old lady, I used to go to hers for milk as a boy, she used to have a cow, it burned down, the house, and I went there to have a look. That was right after those Germans ran away or surrendered, I arrived and I found it, where the cowshed was, there was Mrs. Šostíková kneeling on all fours, she was so large, next to her the cow with a ruptured stomach, yellow suet [pouring out]…”