Josef Srkal

"Before they began moving Jews to concentration camps, they murdered them on the sidelines. Between the villages of Moštěnice and Futorem, there was such a tiny gorge, otherwise the land was flat. They took the Jews into the gorge. There were two hundred or even more Jews there. They had to dig a big hole. The people from the surrounding villages were herded there to watch it. I witnessed the shooting of the Jews in that gorge. They were lined up in front of the pit and shot. They were shot by the whole squad. One soldier had standing in front of him a young woman. She was very pretty, perhaps he liked her. Anyway, he didn’t fire. The woman was left standing while the others fell into the hole. Another German came to that soldier, shot him on the spot, dumped him in the hole and the woman went right after him."

"I'll tell you about my dad, he was with the Red Army. They took part in drilling, but my dad and Mr. Novák wouldn’t touch a gun because they were Christians. So they were to be shot as defectors. Their superiors said that war is war and that this wouldn’t be tolerated. So they were to be shot the next day. They lay at night and in the morning they were supposed to be shot. Novák had a dream in which they escaped the shooting, survived and returned home. My dad too, he had exactly the same dream. In short, in the morning, they were taken by three soldiers who led them to a ravine about a kilometer away, where they were supposed to shoot them. Instead of that, one of the soldiers told them to run away. He somehow distracted the other two and my dad and his friend ran away and they couldn’t catch them anymore. They hid somewhere and arrived home from Suchobezvodnej. They both grew massive beards and turned themselves into terribly old man. Old man were not drafted to the army and thus they sat out the at home."