Anežka Večerková

"We didn't know what to do. There were no men in Kravaře, only women and small children. Our grandmother said to my mother: 'Come to Štítina. At least there are men there.' We had relatives there with whom we were friends. And then we walked - it was already evening, dark - along this path. Planes were already flying. My brother was riding in a stroller, and we were walking next to him. It was good that we didn't delay our departure because they [the Germans] then blew up the bridge over the Opavice river. So we crossed it. We came to Štítina, and there the bombing had started. First, the planes bombed, and then the front moved. I didn't see any German soldiers there. They were all gone. And they were already bombing. Brother Hanz was sleeping outside in his stroller. I had to tell my mother to get him. If she hadn't, he'd have been dead because a bomb fell right there. We were in a cellar, but we couldn't be there afterward. Next door lived a parler [boss of the bricklayers], Kocián, who had a beautiful cottage with high concrete cellars. We had to go there. There were 50 of us there. There was a road nearby, and around it were cottages with thatched roofs. They were all on fire. And so we were in this cellar, full of kids. They knew we were from Kravaře and only spoke German, but my mother and grandmother also spoke Moravian. We were sitting there, Brother Hanz was sick, and we thought he was going to die. And this Kocian had cows, and no woman would go up with him to milk them. So he said to my mother: 'Hilda, come with me.' And my mother went, she wasn't afraid. They milked the cows to give milk to the children."

"After a while, they came and opened the door and asked for the Germans. And somebody said, 'No, the Germans are not here. The Germans have left.' And that was still alright. But then it was midnight, the door opened, and the Russians came back. There was a distillery where they made potato alcohol, and they got drunk on it. The women were still laughing, and they began, 'Come here, woman, for liberation.' But the women didn't want to go. They pulled out a gun and again, 'Give it to me, woman, or I'll shoot.' So the women went. We could hear them struggling with each other. Seven soldiers, one after the other, supposedly took their turns. They didn't get off the wagon for three days. And this Kocián had two daughters, sixteen and eighteen years old. They jumped into a tub, they locked them in there, and nobody found them. There was also a woman who had a seventeen-year-old daughter, and she offered to go instead of her to the soldier. And so it was in Kravaře that mothers went instead of their daughters. They also wanted twelve-year-olds, so the mothers went instead."