Ing., Arch. Zdeňka Rešovská

“We had all our feedstock deposited in Jovsa, including the bag of flour that saved our lives later. Jovsa was known as a guerrilla village so the SS-men went to burn it down. It was night and we were sleeping. Suddenly the SS started slamming their gunstocks on the doors. They drove us all out. Mum put everything she could on me. There were not many people there because all men ran to the forest when they sensed something going on. Women and children stayed. They took us, drove us from the houses and made us run to a meadow by the creek past the village. They ran us all there, women, children, the elderly and the disabled. Two soldiers on horses rode around us so nobody could escape. But they were Hungarian-speaking soldiers who were no longer dependable for Germans. They felt the end of the war was coming and did not want to commit another massacre. Most of all, they wanted to take their uniforms off and run away. They did not want to move on with the front. They put us on the meadow and set the entire village on fire. One of the soldiers rode around and I was crying, curled up with mum. Nina Matejova, our aunt from America, was there with us. She asked the soldier in Hungarian when they would release us or how long it would take. He calmed me saying that nothing else will happen, to stay calm, and it would not take much longer. And they were done soon indeed. We came back and it was all either burned down or devastated and our pots with lard and goose meat were all eaten up.”

“Everybody decided to go down but my father said: ‘I am Czech and they will take me and send me to a camp right away.’ So we got a bag of flour and carried it up below the guerrillas’ headquarters. Grandpa went to Vogl and told him what happened and that we would go to the forest to a gamekeeper’s or woodworkers’ cabin. The cabin had no door so my parents hung up a bed sheet instead. Our traces were visible in the snow the next day and no snow fell that day or the next. It only started snowing later. I think grandpa did not sleep at all then. Then he decided we should go to the headquarters to find out why they did not care about us, as he had told them we would be in that cabin. We came up there. Father walked first and listened hidden behind a tree. They spoke German there. We went right back. And we started looking for raspberry leaves to make tea of. Grandma would make noodles. We also had an almost full loaf of bread and that was kept for me as a child. Grandpa miraculously lit a fire under a lid every morning and half-toasted the bread for me. He would melt snow so we had water to drink. I am not sure – maybe we also had a little bag of sugar. We endured this for four weeks – can you imagine how long it felt? Mum would read the Bible and I wrote a diary that got lost. Then Thursday came; I will never forget it. Grandpa said: “That’s the offensive, folks, it’s good.” What a show it was in the sky! And the front moved probably. The next day we went back to the village, though we may have waited for one more day.”

“Poland was attacked prior to the raids on Jews. The Poles fled south through our country, to the Balkans. The winter was tough in 1941 with a lot of snow. Father and his friend Purma, a former legionnaire who owned a sweetshop in Michalovce, helped them to progress. Many refugees just walked. They were Poles, Czechs – students, young intelligentsia. Sometimes they came at night and knocked on the door. They knew our addresses and navigated well. My father would get skis for the refugees – he bought skis off the entire district. He also carted them in a fly with one horse. I would wake up in the morning and see grandma feeding them. They were hungry and frostbitten, with hurt feet. We lived in a farming mansion in Fekišovce with a lot of room, a big loft, so we could let them stay for some time. They were strangers to us – we knew none of them; neither did the Purmas. Fascists in uniforms often sat in Mr Purma’s sweetshop and he served them as if nothing was going on. Father too talked with everybody easily, as if they had no idea who they were, even though it was no secret. Our property bordered with the annexed Hungarian territory. Father intentionally left straw stacks there so when the weather was bad the refugees could get in, wait for the weather to improve and then move on.”