Private Václav Plos

“Once, all of a sudden a German appeared in their kitchen. He was just a boy and sat by the window. His mother was standing by the stove and the German said he’d like to eat something. His mother told him to sit down and gave him something to eat because they were all frightened, they didn’t know who he was. He kept asking for ‚cvikl, cvikl‘ and his mother didn’t know what a cvikl was. She kept shredding her shoulders indicating she doesn’t know what he’s asking for. Finally he shoved her that what he’s asking for is onion and he asked if he may take one. So he took it, cut it to pieces and ate it. The German ate and thanked his mother very much. About two hours later two German soldiers came with two big sacks full of food – meat cans, bread and the like. They said it was a gift from their chieftain who had just eaten there. He also remembered the Ukrainian nationalists. Once he was hiding a guerilla fighter that they were searching. Because they knew exactly where the Ukrainians would be searching for him, they hid him in the cupboard behind the clothes. They searched the whole house except for that cupboard. When they left they also took all the food they could find. Later they were hiding the food from the Ukrainians – they dug the potatoes in the ground and hid the meat in the well. They put the sausages in the fat, so when we wanted bread with fat mother went and did a sausage with potatoes.”

“His back was troubling him a lot during the war. When he was at Dukla he almost froze. They were driving on trucks and it was freezing so much that they had to pull them down like statues because they couldn’t move, they couldn’t bend their limbs. From this he got some ulcers in his back. He was treated by a German doctor. He was afraid of him but the doctor treated him very kindly. He cured him completely, only a few scars were left behind. He used to speak badly rather about the Soviet soldiers because they didn’t know how to behave to women. He said the Germans were polite.”

“The Russians were more vulgar then the Germans. Especially to our women – it wasn’t unusual for one woman to be raped by ten Russians. The Germans didn’t do things like this. They preferred to have their own girl. The Russians didn’t respect women in any way. It’s war, so “Davaj”! “Davaj suda”, that’s what my husband used to say. He didn’t like the Russians.”

“They weren’t allowed to have any women during the war. Everything was full of lice there. All were so-called “filcky”, infected women, because they were abused, raped, so they refrained from this as it was just problems - to have a woman.”

“The worst years for him were the years after the war. When they were settling the Sudetenland they got houses that had been previously inhabited by Germans. They had their property there, their cattle, fields etc. there was a women from Germany with children who served as his maiden. When she was being expelled to Germany she wasn’t allowed to take any flour or the like with her so my husband told her to bake as many stuffed cakes for the children as she wanted. She later wrote him a few times from Germany but then the letters stopped, so he didn’t know what happened to her. Whether she got married again or whether she found her husband eventually. When he lived in the borderlands he had a field, agricultural machinery, all the cattle and all other things you need to run such a farm. But when he – for example – wanted to spread butter on his slice of bread, he had to give the butter to the “contingent” as they used to say those days.”

“He said the worst thing was when a woman had a small baby that she was holding in her arms. A soldier came, tore out of her arms, slammed it on the ground and kicked the baby’s head. The head was all over the boot and the baby was dead. The woman then got raped. He said that these were the worst moments for him. And sometimes they heard the women scream for help but couldn’t help them, that was terrible for him. Even some of our women working in the healthcare sector were raped. It was incredibly cruel; he didn’t want to experience it again.”