Zdenka Říhová

"Our house was broken in half, the whole wall collapsed and all. And there were people who had the baskets with the laundry in the basement... my mother had enough gold because she cooked for a doctor and always got gifts... Everything was picked at, everything stolen, so we stayed completely without any means, well so we had to buy everything and there wasn't much... So my parents started in Slovakia, then they started here, then they bombed us, so they started from scratch for the third time."

"She lived there, and had a small shop in the square, such a little lady, she was a Jew walking by a cane. Such a small counter, a small shop. So I never saw if she had one leg only or whatever... Well, as we were there with the basket, we talked to her that we would just go collect the chips in that woodshed. And then the door opened and two tall, dark men were standing in there. So what did they do? They started shouting at her, the one he did by taking as she should - it was such a normal counter, not like today's shops, a wooden counter - and she had eggs in a bowl, homemade butter, cottage cheese, and things that one needed, more stuff up on the counter. He came, picked it up like that and threw it all down on the ground. They started there... she was a weak granny; she didn't oppose him. And my sister took my hand and we ran into the woodshed across the yard, where we survived two hours of fear before they left.”