Jevgenie Ružečko

“That’s the way it was. We have endured a lot. When grandpa was seventeen, he was drafted to the army… Tell them about it yourself, why should I talk about you? They took them to Ukraine, they were in Crimea, and in Crimea he got drafted to the army, to the Russian army… Where did you serve? In Buzuluk? Or where? – To the Czech army! – Yes, and from there you were taken to the Czech army. – They invited us to the army committee and I was seventeen. They told me: ´You are too young, we cannot take you.´ There was also a representative of the Czech army. He told me: ´You will go to the Russian army a year later anyway, so why don’t you join the Czech army instead?´ Well, it didn’t make a difference to me, and so I agreed that I would join the Czech army. So that was how I got drafted to the Czech army. – What Czechs were there? –There was Ludvík Svoboda. And then, that was already in March 1945, I got to serve president Beneš. I served as his guard while he was in Košice. His residents were in Košice and the president was in England, and when he arrived to Košice, we served as his bodyguards. And when Prague was liberated and the war was over, they took us to Prague. They offered us to work as president’s bodyguards for the following five years. Five years?! The war was now over and I should serve five more years there? No. Not for me. They eventually transferred us to the Ministry of Defence. The ministry is located in Prague-Dejvice. We served us guards for the ministry building, and then we stayed in the barracks in Ruzyně for some time, that’s where the airport is, and then they transported us home. – What did they propose to you? – L.R.: They told us, don’t go back home, we will give you apartments here. There were Germans in the villages there. The Germans had settled there when they had occupied the Czechs. They lived in their villages and had their apartments there and everything. They were then given twenty-four hours to leave. The same in Prague. German houses were thus available. The Germans left and we were told: if you wish, stay here in the city, or you can live in a village. They put guards to the houses which had been vacated by the Germans and which were now empty so that nobody would go inside… and then they went there themselves! (And you didn’t stay?) No, I didn’t want to. Some people did stay there. One from Kirillka village stayed there. And some people from Methodejka as well. There were quite a lot of them.”

“How it all actually began here? – Well, we no longer know exactly, but I remember something from what our parents told us... about their arrival here and how they settled here; they had to cut down the forest and construct the houses. They were coming here in horse-driven wagons all the way from Bohemia, and later they brought over their families with them. And they began building farms… Those who wanted to settle here were given lots here, in the mountains and forests, and they were taking over the areas down from here, all the way to Cemdolina. They had their own forest, and fields, where they were sowing wheat, and later they had cows, and they were working on their farms. They lived well, because it was all theirs. They were working on their land and building houses, but it took a long time, depending on the money they had, or if they had a forest, for example.”