Jaroslava Vosátková

“A soldier in German uniform appeared there. He spoke in Polish and he begged my uncle to give him some civilian clothing, saying that it was not his fault that as a Polish man he had to join the German army, and he wanted my uncle to provide a hiding place for him. My uncle refused, of course, and he told him: ‘That’s not possible, you need to go away,’ because if Russians found him there… This almost happened just a short time after: there was the building of the Sokol gym above us, and it was one floor higher than the farm, and some German had stayed there and he was shooting at Russians who were approaching the place. The first Russian who arrived to us just ran in and he informed us that there was a German somewhere above us, and he ran through the house and he was searching the whole farm and later they really did shoot the German there.”

“The blast wave was so strong that it blew away the door of our basement. When you imagine yourself in this situation, we were awfully scared, for sure, it was a terrible blast and we did not know whether the house would not collapse upon us. When it got a bit quieter, our dad and the other man (about four families lived in the villa) discussed what to do in order to secure the door if there was another blast in case the bombs continued to fall. My sister and I remember that we found it extremely funny, because there was no place to sit and we were thus sitting on some benches and also on a washtub which was there. They decided: ‘The washtub needs to go there,’ and they propped the washtub against the door and held it like this. I don’t know, perhaps it happens to you, too, that even when you are in some critical situation, something suddenly seems awfully funny to you. My sister and I are ashamed to this day that we were laughing so much when we realized that dad and this Mr. Modrý believed that they could save us by holding the washtub against the door.”