Růžena Prokešová

“I have a letter from daddy from Vidnava where he writes: ´Vidnava is a small town and it is located right at the border with Germany, where the two countries are separated only by a road. Here we are already separated from the rest of the world. The situation here is terrible. I cannot even describe it all. All the Czech families are moving inland, and all life has stopped here. We are waiting to get into action. Only this can save us from this hell. The local Germans keep escaping over the border to Germany. The way everything is being prepared, it seems that war is inevitable, and we will receive it here with calmness. War is terrible, but we need to defend our precious country. We all here miss our children and families. But when we realize that they would have to live in subjection, then we will indeed fight for their better future and one day they will say: Our fathers fought for our better life, and they even lost their lives for that. I am writing in the forest, on duty. We sleep fully clothed, with weapons in hand, always ready. I don’t know for how long we will endure it. We sleep standing, too, just leaning against a tree.´”

“When the country became occupied by the Russian army, my husband was on duty from August 20th through 21st, and he was thus in the barracks. Our daughter Růžena was in Vidnava in a pioneer summer camp. My husband sent a soldier to me who told me to be brave and not to worry, because my husband now would not be able to leave the barracks for a longer time. In Prostějov it began on Sunday. It was probably never found out what triggered the shooting. People arrived on a city bus, got off, and the shooting began. There were dead and seriously wounded people. I remember one young man who lost his leg. The caskets were then displayed in front of the city hall in Prostějov. Moreover, our daughter was to return from the summer camp, and we and other parents went to the railway station and the train arrived, with a car on which there was a sign ´reserved,´ but the children didn’t arrive in it. We had no idea what was going on. There were no mobile phones at that time, I asked several friends whether they would be willing to go there to pick up my child. Nobody wanted to go there, because they didn’t know what the situation on the roads was like. I was asking taxi drivers. Although I was offering them more money, none of them was willing to go there. Eventually, there was one brave man from the agricultural cooperative, whose child was also in that camp. He took a small lorry and he brought back as many children as he could load in there, including my daughter.”