František Tendl

“Grandpa had a unique double-case Doxy clock hanging on the cupboard. A Russian soldier came in and saw the clock and he took it. He went away and he did not care about anything else. I myself saw a Russian going on a horse-driven wagon with a huge trunk dial clock tied on his back. He probably wanted to take it home. They were after watches. Some of them had their wrists full of watches. I don’t remember that there were any soldiers of Asian descent here.”

“Certain Mrs. Gabrielová, who was my father’s relative, had four sons. Osvald stayed here and two of them died. One got killed in Wroclaw and the other in Kerch in Crimea. We received photos from him and a letter from an officer who then wrote to my grandma and told her about how he had died. He dated a girl from Dobřečov. He carried her photo together with his documents. Shrapnel hit his wallet and penetrated the photograph as well. This former fiancée of him still comes to visit us. She is still alive in Germany and she is ninety-three years old. She later married another man in Germany.”

“There were two of them, but I don’t know what they had done. What I saw with my own eyes was that they were digging a hole with a small coal shovel as punishment. Their fingers were all broken. I could see blood and open wounds. Had they done something wrong there? Were they digging their own grave? I don’t know. I only remember that the shovel broke after a while and they were digging the ground with their bare hands.”