Ana Vodvárková

“So we arrived on the twenty-first of September and the Zagreb radio reported that Ivanovo Selo was attacked. And several people were killed. And I had children in the group, a bus full of children from Ivan Selo. And I don't know, who was alive or dead then. In two or three days I was called on the phone, a colleague who just has a funeral today, a former teacher. He said , 'Look, take a piece of paper and write down who died, who is wounded and so on.' What now, now I was keeping it secret. 'Don't tell anyone.' Jesus, how to keep it a secret. Some of those children´s parents died. And then, some of those children came to me and say, 'My dad works at the post office and said he would call me every day and he wouldn't call me.' And he was dead, they killed him, or there were plenty of other cases, but then I had to tell the teachers, and we called a professional service from Opava to tell us what to do. They were psychologists and paramedics and they said, 'Such a report can't be told to the children. Let the surviving parent be there. ' So we soon organized a visit from parents, mothers, actually, to tell those children, and you can imagine what it looked like, but we had doctors there, we had nurses who weren't in the white clothes. They could provide the children and the adults certain medicine to calm down. It was difficult, but the children were with us, the Czech state helped to make the children ... maybe some of them would experience it much worse, maybe they would be injured or even killed.”

"On September 13, the first expedition of children left for Bohemia. There were over three hundred, I don't know - three hundred and fifty, several - nine or ten - buses. Preschool and school-age children, high school students as well as the teachers. We didn't want to. The second expedition took place in a week, where I was too. We went to Jánské Koupelí, we didn't know where we were going, we got on buses, children from all over, it was mediated by the Union of Czechs, our Czech school and Mrs. Janotová with their team, and we went there. "Well, you'll be there for a maximum of fourteen days. Until Daruvar calms down." We stayed there for four months. So some of your parents were with us. Your mom and aunt went along. You see, I don't know anymore, I think your mom wasn't there. Yours didn't know if he was anyone, Dad or anyone." - "And how was your stay there? What were you doing there with the children?" - "The children had to go to school there. We didn't organize the school right away because we thought we would go home soon. The children only brought their clothes for a few days of autumn. In the meantime, when it was seen... they told us here: organize a school.' Well, so we organized it."