Anna Šubová

“In 1946 those gentlemen, Czechs and Slovaks, arrived there and began campaigning among the people. They always invited them to someone’s house, but they were mostly inviting the young people, like Tonda or Štefan. They promised them that there would be work there, that there were farms where they would be able to work. And when they told my dad that he would have horses there, he jumped at the chance, because horses were more than oxen. But mom didn’t want to move at first, but aunt Růža, her sister, was the first who went here, sometime in autumn 1946. The boys ran away, and our parents had to catch them at the railway station. Mom then said: ´Fine, if you are not afraid to be hungry, I have already been in Brazil and I have been all over the world, and so I will go there, too.”

“People moved out from Alesd, and when the Russians were approaching, many people from Alesd, priests and such, were hiding in those villages. The Germans went first, but they were already fleeing, because the Russian army was already behind them. We were afraid. My father was on the front and we the kids were at home only with our mom. As the armies were passing, there were always soldiers who wanted to rape and loot, and they were walking through the villages and looting. We were afraid that somebody would attack us at night. Girls were hiding in attics, and we were scared. When the front was passing, there was some shooting, and we were not allowed to leave the house, we were told to stay inside. Our pigs, which had been used to grazing outside, broke through the door one day and ran away into a pea field. There were bullets flying by my head, but I wanted to chase the pigs away. I would have felt sorry if they had destroyed the peas, because I thought they would damage the field. My parents were shouting at me and cursing me, but I went there and chased the pigs away. When I returned home, I was punished, because they had ordered me not to go out. But I thought about the damage that the pigs would have done. The important people were hiding in our village, too; we were providing a hiding place for the priest, for instance. They were wearing women’s clothing, and they were helping us, digging the fields and so on, but they were wearing women’s clothes.”