Marie Riedlová

“My oldest brother Vladimir was drafted by the Russians. He was slightly over twenty, shortly before turning 21. But instead of the army he was drafted to a work camp. In front of them marched the…, how do you call them, those belonging to the upper, rich class? The kulaks. We were considered to be kulaks so he couldn’t go to the army but had to go to a work camp. They were a mobile labor brigade. They were taking them to places where they needed some work to be done. They were digging ditches and the like. When they were ready with the work they moved somewhere else. In this way they got as far as Siberia.”

“Did you witness some atrocities committed by the Ukrainian nationalists or by the Germans. For example burning down a village or the like?” “No, we didn’t experience anything of the sort. I guess we were lucky. What happened was that a bomb fell in one of our fields. Fortunately it was outside of the village so nobody was hurt. But we had this huge crater in the field.” “Do you know whether it was a Soviet or a German bomb?” “No, I have no idea.” “When did that happen?” “Well, I think it was in June 1941.” “So it probably was a German Bomb.” “Yes, it might have been a German bomb.” “Someone said that the Russians and Ukrainians were harassing Czechs but we didn’t witness anything like that. They had their own villages and we had our own villages, too. We spoke Czech and Ukrainian so we could communicate with them. They were actually learning from the Czechs how to run a farm and the like.” “Could you tell me more about the farming?” “Well their farms weren’t as developed as ours. The Czechs there were skilled craftsman and knew how to do their craft. I have to say that the Czechs are very skilled and intelligent people. Every Czech is gifted, the people here in Litoměřice are very gifted as well.” “But aren’t the people today rather cunning?” “They’re too intelligent I guess. But when we were living in Volhynia with the Ukrainians, we were just trying to coexist peacefully with them. We were happy that they weren’t robbing us. We were living in harmony with them.” “So you taught them how to build wooden houses?” “Yes, we taught them how to build wooden houses and how to sow fruit trees and similar things. But they were so unskilled. They were sleeping in dugouts. But slowly they learned some basic things from us like fertilizing the land etc. They saw what we were doing and were simply imitating it. Additionally they were working for us on our fields so they learned things by doing them and did them in the same way on their own fields. Later on they were also looking for more land.” “So what about the time when the Russians came back to Volhynia after the short period of German occupation? What do you remember of this time? Were the Russians, for example, using your house for their troops or something of the sort?” “No, they didn’t, we didn’t have such a big house. They didn’t come to our village because it was a small and quite insignificant place. They weren’t much interested in accommodating soldiers in our village. We didn’t really feel the war too much. We hardly saw any soldiers.”

“What did it mean for your family when the Russians came for the first time in 1939? Did they confiscate your property, your fields? Did you have to forcibly join the Kolkhoz?” “Everyone was responsible for the delivery of supplies. They didn’t immediately set up a Kolkhoz. That only happened later. The Germans drove the Russians out. Then the Russians came back and then it started.” “Were there any Russians in your village?” “Not really, only when they were staying overnight. Then they stayed in the barn and slept on the hay. We had a great hall there so they all slept on the floor and in the morning they carried it away again.” “All right, so nothing extraordinary happened in that period. Then came the German occupation in 1941. What memories do you have of the Germans, how did it start?” “I don’t know how and when it started. And I don’t know when it ended.” “So when did you notice for the first time that the Germans were there? Was there some fighting or bombing going on in your vicinity? Or did you learn about it from someone who had seen it?” “Well, we saw that the soldiers were dressed differently then the Russians. And they had more stuff. These Russians and Ukrainians didn’t have anything. But the Germans sometimes had chocolate or something like that. The Russians never had anything like that.” “So what you’re saying is that the Germans were better equipped then the Russians? And that they had chocolate. Did they sometimes give chocolate to the children? Or how did you find out about the chocolate?” “Very rarely. We saw or were told that they had it. I never got anything. We lived in a small village and there was rarely anybody passing through.” “So they were just passing through, right?” “Right.”

“Under the German occupation the Jews were persecuted and they suffered. Did you see something of the sort your self?” “Yes, I heard about it. However, I didn’t see it personally. There were no Jews in our village. Once in a while they came to buy something but by and large Jews lived in the bigger residential places. I heard stories about Jews hiding in the forests and Germans hunting them down. I know that they had a hard time. They never came to our village, but I think that sometimes they came in the evening, but we didn’t come into contact with them.” “When you were traveling to Dubno, did you see the Jewish ghetto there? Did you see them walking with their stars?” “I didn’t see them.” “I’ve heard somewhere that they were shooting them along the railway. They had this place in the fields between Dubno and Mirohošť where they were shooting them. Did you hear anything about these executions?” “They killed them wherever they found them.” “In this place they had a huge pit and…” “They were throwing them into the pit, like they did it in many places. But I didn’t see anything of it.”