Václav Šimíček

“They led the captured Germans through the village again. And one of the captured Germans had a dog with him. A wolfdog, a German shepherd, properly speaking. On a leash. Suddenly he jumped up to one boy (my) friend and thrust the leash into his hand. A huge wolf that we started calling Rolf. We each had a revolver. Because when the front, not even the front, the Germans ran and threw everything away - threw them away. There were several kilometres near the village; the ditches were lined with military and civilian material. So we rummaged through it like boys, we each had a revolver. But that's interesting, we didn't have the German military dishes, but they were there too. We had many Colts, drum revolvers. In addition, that was not the armament of the German army. They simply took it somewhere and threw it away afterwards. Well, one day we went with Rolf and a boy started shooting. What that dog was doing...! So we understood that he simply had a hard time at the front.”

“During the war there was nothing in the shops, there were food tickets. So even our diet was completely different. Only about once a week we got the rations for those food tickets or meat. Therefore, I know some dishes, for example I remember, a common dish of ours was jahelnik (millet porridge). Do you know what it is? You do not know. It is just that the millets were available without tickets back then, because I remember that we often ate it. It was baked in a millet oven containing shelled millet and dried plums. In addition, it was cut normally like a roll. Nevertheless, there were plenty of other meatless dishes. For example, we called it small bags. These were dough patties stuffed with jam, marmalade, cottage cheese, and then they closed up and it was cooked. That was also our frequent meal. In addition, a very famous food from that time of the war was beet marmalade and artificial honey. But I can tell you that it was blamed on the fact that we had sores on skin every now and then. And ugly ones too. We knew that about them all, where he must not push, where one must not hit, because of the sores.”