Růžena Petrášová

“The next day, I immediately moved to my husband’s parents in the village of Zubčice. It was not far from Velešín. And there, they housed six American soldiers. ‘Jesus Mary, Růža, there are soldiers here,’ the mother threatened - after all, I was an eighteen-year-old young girl! Three of them came to me, they knew German, and so did I. I couldn’t understand the others. They came to the kitchen while I was helping the mother cook. They untied my apron, they flirted with me, they carried my daughter, and she held onto their hair. They jumped around the yard on their shoulders - they probably had children too, the Americans. We were getting along well, and then, there were ten black kids!”

“The Russians were worth nothing. That time they wanted to rape me on that bench, and thankfully, an old couple was walking there. I was there with the pram. One was already tearing my clothes, unbuttoning me, and the gentleman had a pocket in his shirt and wanted to whistle, and the commando would have come. They would have–they reported about it through the loudspeaker around town–they would have shot them. But I didn’t want that, I begged him. I didn’t want to see them get shot because of me. And when they saw it, they ran away, I was glad.”

“On 28 September, on Saint Wenceslas Day, we left because in Krumlov, the state police were our neighbours, and they cared for us and said that Krumlov would be occupied and that when they flee, we should flee as well. But my father came from Germany, and it was different there. He was there because of work. So he immediately packed our things in bags - the duvets and everything. We had everything ready. And indeed, in September on Saint Wenceslas Day, we fled, we took the train, and the state police, who lived next to us as neighbours, took our things in the car for us - the duvets, it was all packed in bags, and they dropped it off at the station in Budějovice. When we arrived there–to this day, there are two large halls in České Budějovice, one for departures and one for arrivals–there were so many people, and they were laying on the ground, everyone had knapsacks.”