Anna Stančíková

“My dad was sent to forced labour in Germany (Austria) during the war, he worked in the Steyermark Graz factory. That’s the Steyer we [the Czech Republic] are buying Pandurs from now. So that’s where he worked during the war. He was the oldest of the whole camp, and I know that he wrote to Mum to send him some usable clothing, to put together what she could from around. She always sent parcels of clothes, because there were a lot of people from Ukraine, Russia and Yugoslavia there, from the whole of Eastern Europe. The Germans rounded up the girls in just the clothes they had on them. So to allow them to wash their dresses and so on, Mum sent them the clothes.”

“When I started going to school, Mum and Dad told me that if I saw a duvet in the window, I shouldn’t go home, but instead I should go straight through the vineyards to Javorník. The idea was that if it came to the worst, they’d take us to Slovakia. Because the Slovak borders begin right after Javorník.”

“Our granddad knew how to build stoves. He built the Procházkas a raised tile stove. The kind of one they have in mansions, and there was a shaft leading from under them. The stove could be used for heating. The stove could be pushed out like this, and he could hide underneath them, into the shaft - there was some sort of ventilation flue there, so it was possible to use it for heating. They chimney would be puffing and he could be hiding underneath. My parents knew that, and the villagers found out about it only after the Procházkas’ house was sold and they began renovating it. They discovered the hiding shaft beneath the stove.”

“Before the war ended, then the English when they flew over, they’d drop down these tapes of tin-foil, kind of like a silver gun carriage, and we collected them. Or they dropped pamphlets. They gave some kind of signal, because they dropped weapons in the night. Our father was very active, and he dragged the weapons into the cellar, into the room which has the things for pressing grapes. Such a little room, and the weapons were stacked there, covered with straw and hay. When (the front) was passing over, there were some ten or twelve families of us hiding in that cellar - all of Dad’s sisters, and Grandma with Granddad. Everyone had a straw mat, so there was just a narrow pathway in between. There was a stove at the top of the press, and that’s where we cooked. The weapons were in the room next to the press. When the front was passing over, the Germans came and they had a dog with them. They said they’d have a look in the room. My brother told them they mustn’t, that we had a bitch there. That their dog and ours would fight. In the end he just showed them a glimpse of the room and the second German said to close it again, and they left. Except the one German came back. And because Uncle Vaněk knew German and he happened to be at the toilet behind the cellar, he heard them say that the one would take another look, that it was suspicious. (The German) came back without the dog, and so Uncle had to shoot him in the end. He had a pistol. None of us knew it, because he went round the other way somehow, to get into the cellar. And if they’d have found out (about the weapons), they’d have shot us all.”