"When the war was coming to an end, we had to move to Opava, because the Germans started pushing the Russians again. A Russian soldier on horseback was going round all the households telling us to go to Opava right away, that there would be a big fight. So, we loaded our things on a cart and went up somewhere on Kylešovský kopec. It was quite a long way to Otice. The maids who were milking the cows stayed at home and I had to go there with a milk jug. I was a little girl, I don't know how my parents ever thought of it. There were so many dead horses in front of Otice, where the chapels used to be! Because it was so hot, their bellies were already bloated. There were also many German soldiers lying there, and an old German woman walked among them, veiled, and looked around at all the soldiers and stole what they had on them - wedding rings and things like that. I stayed standing and she said to me: 'Geh weg!' - to go away. Well, I went, I was scared."
"Stáňa [her brother] had to go dig trenches near the Opava hospital, back then it was a bare plain, today it is a housing estate. I brought him lunch from my mother, but he wanted me to take it to the barracks on Beethoven Square, where they were staying, saying he would be there soon. The German soldier who was guarding them heard this and told him in Czech not to send me there because there was a big air raid reported. At that time, there were soldiers at the barracks who were about to go to the front. Staňa stopped me, took his lunch and ordered me to go home quickly. I had just reached the last tram stop when the planes began to roar and bombs began to fall. I ran to a booth where an elderly man was hiding. We clung to each other in fear. We thought we'd both be dead! When everything was quiet, he said: 'So, we survived, little girl. Where are you from?' I said: 'From Otice, Janáčková.' He said he knew my father and that I should run home."
"The Germans hanged a Pole at the Tancovisko. He was in the service of a German woman. She ordered him to work even though it was a big holiday. Poles don't work on such holidays, they go to church. He refused to work that day and she immediately turned him in to the Gestapo. When he tried to escape, they shot him in the leg, it became inflamed and he got blood poisoning. They called all the Polish workers from the area who worked for the Germans to Otice and hung him in front of them."
Drahomíra Starobová, née Janáčková, was born on 26 September 1931 in a miller’s house on the Kamenná hora hill in Otice near Opava. She had ten siblings and they lived on the verge of poverty. In 1938 the family had to leave the house because the German army occupied Kamenná hora. In 1943, the Germans executed a Polish worker, František Kubica, as a warning. Her father, Josef Janáček, was active in the anti-Nazi resistance and hid partisans at home. At the end of the war, they hid in a shelter in the garden and had to relocate briefly to Kylešovice. There she witnessed the rape of a woman by a Soviet soldier. After primary school she took care of her sick mother. During her life she changed several jobs, including heavy industry. She was married three times and had three children. At the time of filming in 2023, she was living in a nursing home in Nová Bělá.
