Bohumil Venclík

“On the way there were three boys with us from the Sudetes. They had refused to join the German army. [The wagons] were divided into small compartments, we were four there. And they added one more man there. From Ostrava. They had one last cigarette, they were smoking it together, and they didn’t give him a single puff. The window was blacked out so we couldn’t see outside, and there was a ventilator above it. One of the boys climbed up and looked out through the ventilator. The Ostravan called the German guard that the boys wanted to escape, that they were unscrewing it there. So they were beat up and then dragged around in cuffs. We came to Salzburg, and they put us into one small room, where there were forty of us together. In the middle of the night we heard - wham, wham, wham, moans and a cry for help. And dull blows. The boys beat the informer to death.”

“Then there were thirteen of us in one cell. The leader was a doctor from Kojetín. There were so many fleas there that the blankets moved. The doctor said we didn’t have anything else to do, so we’d catch fleas. Believe it or not, the first day we caught 450 fleas. Then there weren’t any fleas there any more. We always told the oberwachtmeister that we needed a bucket of water. Two to three times a week we washed the floor and wiped the bed frames. There were no fleas there. People brought me extra helpings. Say, the neighbours peeled their potatoes and threw the peels out, but we ate them. One of the prisoners had all his teeth pulled out, so he gave me his crusts. He’d call at me: ‘Hey you whose dad’s got his head in basket, come here.’ I wanted to throw it in his face, but the doctor told me to take every scrap of food I could get. I only weighed forty kilos.”