Oldřich Vašák

"I welcomed the Russians and we were in the cellars for some bombing. I saw the Russians, but then, when they had headquarters there, they visited us in the cellars. Each family had a fenced part of the cellar that we were in. I was there together with my mother, my brother, my second brother, and another family, a young lady, she had a three-year-old daughter and a stepdaughter with us in the cubicle. Since there was a 90-year-old grandmother with us wearing a large skirt that was once worn by old women, especially country girls, she hid the daughter, then sixteen, under her skirt in case anyone happened to come and lust after her. Coincidentally, two Russians came with rifles, and now they were choosing, choosing. Tension, you know, no fun, such ugly guys, greasy. When I saw them marching around us, it was horrible, with the horses, and some soldiers running beside them. So in the evening they came to that cubicle and chose the lady."

​​"I was at home. Two Czechs came and asked if Mr. Vašák was home. I say, 'No, but he's coming for lunch.' I had no idea they were the Gestapo. If I knew, I might have thought to send them into the house through a certain entrance, one my father didn't use, he would use the other. If it only had occurred to me, however, one does not realize it. So they were waiting for him and arrested him downstairs in front of the entrance to the house. You know, he didn't come home, so we were nervous about father. In the end, we found out that he first was in Kounic's dormitories for some time, then he was transferred to Flossenbürg and then to an offshoot of the Flossenbürg camp in Liberec [the witness confused it, it was a concentration camp in Litoměřice]. I have some letters, those people think he got there and was in factories in tunnels and working there. Father was forty-eight years old, he was a man full of strength, I don't remember him being sick. In the end, on February 5, 1945, we received a paper declaring that he died.​​"