Vladimír Polák

“I remember it and it was a distressed moment. He said goodbye to us at our home gate. As if he knew it, he said, 'Olinka and Vládíček, we see each other for last time. I join the army and the sky closes behind me and we will not see each other ever again.‘ And he was right.”

“They arrived at night and robbed. It was always horrible. My mum was a widow and I was an orphan, my dad was already dead. For some time we lived with my mother's parents in a small village called Májovky in Moldava u Cupalů. They always came to the yard with horses and a car at night and went looting. Every time we went home in the evening, we knocked out wooden shutters from the outside and sprinkled the doors from the inside so that they could not enter. They always got in anyway. They had guns, and by the butt they broke out windows or doors. If we could not stop them, they would take everything they could; mainly food: flour, sugar, salt, bread, meat and so on. They took it from inside the building. Outside, they went into a pigsty and stole a cow with a calf or killed a pig and threw it on a wagon or took our horse. They kept stealing everything, especially at night.”