František Pollak

"It was the second or third house, which was hit by a bomb. Well, yes, but in that forest on Větruše and down that road - corpses, children, women and prisoners. The Russians, the French, I don't know what it's all about… They escaped into the forest and the bombs fell into the forest. And as there are the anti-aircraft shelters today, it's a museum, so above that, you can still see it, it's overgrown, as the bombs fell, it's overgrown. The whole of it was… And in that Bílinská street, down there, there were corpses on the road. When we went there and it was already evening, by bike. The weather was nice and we pushed everything there. And up, to the Grand, the road that led there, it was all bombed, too. So, we took it back from there and went to Grand. It was not possible to drive. And there were camps, between Větruše and ... I don't know, perhaps everything was bombed. I do not know, but the prisoners… they were mostly Russians. In that forest, in Větruše. I will never forget that in my life."

"There was also a camp of Ukrainian women, but it was unguarded. There was a French prison of war camp in the distillery, but they had free movement, so they went there to see the Ukrainians. And in between, there was a ditch like this and there was a road, it was only the fields there, so they planted the unexploded bombs there. And they were bombs from such small to, for example, two meters. And there they folded them into a pyramid, in that field, between that brewery garden. The Germans put it together, the prisoners detonated unexploded bombs. And we were watching it as boys. You saw that from the beginning from the barrel, the bomb, all the way down to the base. And there was a hole in the middle, I don't know what it was. And you saw through the bomb, it was such a hole. And we as boys there… it wasn't guarded, so we got a string, soaked it and pushed the string into one of the bombs, which was the last. Like that pyramid. And we went very far and we set it on fire, the string. We wondered what it would do. Well, the string burned and into the bomb... but it didn't explode. But it was weird! The whole of Krásné Březno, the distillery stopped working, everyone stopped working. It was just a black smoke everywhere."

"After the war, they set up a gathering camp up in Všebořice and expelled the Germans there. And here, not far from here, there they again expelled the men. And there they had to go to work, clear the demolition in Krásné Březno, after the explosion. They marched and they beat them during the march. Children who had to wear white tapes, some of whom were expelled, so when we went into the…, they took them off. But that was after the explosion. So, we went, we took our bikes with us, we met and went to Ústí. And here was the fountain, as Bohemka is today, there was a fountain nearby, and as Spořitelna is, there were the ropes stretched in the square, there were such… [obstructions] and there everyone [who had white belts] - women, men, they brought them all there."