Ludmila Vlachová

“I have practically no memory of my father. I can only remember one thing, how he escaped from the concentration camp in Breslau. We were living in Horní Paseky near Rožnov, and one night he tapped on the windowpane. I really loved the gold clasp that he wore on his tie. I was about four years old, and I kept playing with it. I never saw him since, of course. And me mother served as a messenger. She took messages and other things. I remember, when I was about five, we got up one day and went into the wood. Mum told me to sit down by a spruce and to wait, that she’d be back in a bit. She was taking a bag of food to the partisans. I remember it like it was yesterday. Mum was in touch with Mrs Stromšíková in Rožnov, who warned her that the Germans were after her, that she should send me somewhere safe. She couldn’t send me to Granny because she lived in a wooden cottage in the mountains, where her sons and families lived. So she put me into a children’s home for orphans in Rožnov. Soon afterwards the SS came and took her away. It was in summer, and I was visiting the old lady when suddenly someone came from Rožnov and told Granny that the Gestapo had taken [Mum].”