Berta Růžičková

“When the end of the war came, there were Americans in our place. But at the outskirts of the village and a little bit further, towards Nivy about a hundred or two hundred metres away, I don’t know, but approximately, there were Russians. In this way we happened to be in the American sector. But when we wanted to go visit our relatives before they were deported, because they were not deported until 1946, we needed to have a permission, a document in order to be able to go. But the Americans did not need any permits, the Russians required them.”

“Well, when they had to be deported, the people were notified. They were mostly women with children, because most of the men were in the military, and so those who received the deportation orders were largely women. The deportation order stated the date and place. A wagon arrived to the village and they took them to Sokolov to the assembly camp. In the deportation order they were also instructed that they had to leave everything in order, everything had to be clean, the house had to be cleaned and locked and they had to hand over the keys to the administration office. And the people then arrived to the assembly camp and they spent about three or four days there, until a certain number of people gathered there, and then they boarded trains and they were taken away.”