Břetislav Sládek

"School or workshops were over, we went to the dormitory, and there were twelve of us in the room. There were groups of machine fitters, shoemakers, etc. Each group consisted of 30 people. It had its leader - an upper grade apprentice, and its tutor who looked after us. We came back from the workshops, we went to the canteen, we ate, and there was already a programme of what was going to happen next. We didn't have any free time. There was always something going on. Then there was a curfew. At school, when there were exams, there were available classrooms. At ten o'clock the lights went out everywhere in the dormitory and we had to go to those classrooms where we would study until maybe two or three in the morning. We made products too and we were paid for it. But the money was transferred directly to our accounts. Only the tutor had access to the account. If we needed a shirt, for example, he would say, 'Show me your locker, what kind of shirts you have - you don't need one yet, that's sufficient.' Or he would write a note, we would go to the shop, they would give us a shirt and it would be deducted from the account. We took care of ourselves."

"The food rations were very poor as there were seven of us, including five children. We were all young and always hungry. The ration was poor, it wasn't much. They had bigger rations in the Sudetenland. There were two big farmers in our village so we went to help in the fields as children. We didn't take money, but grain and things like that. We got grain, but it had to be milled somewhere. But everything was guarded, even the mills. There were German inspections everywhere. So we had to go and exchange grain for flour. We used to go to Doubravice, on foot at night. There was a mill there. I was a kid, I used to go with my mother. She used to carry five to eight kilos of grain, I was given two kilos in a bag. We used to exchange it for flour there. Sometimes the miller in Doubravice, which was six or eight kilometres away, said he couldn't give us any flour, because he had an inspection there. So we would walk all the way to Nové Zámky, to the mill, and back again at night. Sometimes we didn't succeed."