“They sent us to the cellar, there were still some potatoes there, which we ate and we slept on them. They gave us just some paper sacks which we would put on the potatoes and sleep on them at night. And there was fighting, there was shooting, planes were flying above us at night. So we spent maybe three nights sleeping on potatoes, and meanwhile, the Russians came, so we could sleep in beds again. But there was no bed linen, they just gave us some blankets, quite rudimentary, as the Russian soldier also wanted to sleep there. And of course they had to watch over us, as we were just children, I was thirteen years old, I was so skinny, just this tall and thin girl. Well, the girls and the Russians, we were not safe at all, I would say. So we slept in those beds for maybe fourteen days. But we couldn´t go home as we had been liberated on April 28th and Ostrava wasn´t free until April 30th. And we couldn´t go home, as our parents said that there was no connection, we couldn´t take a train, there were no buses at that time, so the only option was to walk, and it was 45 kilometers to Ostrava. So we had to wait, and I think that we came home as late as on May 24th. And do you know how it was? We went by a cattle train, as there were no other carriages than those cattle trains, the ones which took you to those German camps. There were no chairs or anything, we just sat on the floor, and we went bit by bit, as there was a bridge, and if the bridge was just gone, it had been blown up, we would get up from the train, take our shoes and put them around our necks and we would cross the river, Prostřední Bečva river it was, to the other side, with a suitcase on this long stick, with my sister. And the water was knee-high in that river, we crossed to the other side and there was another train waiting for us, so we would get in, and we had to do it three times.”
