Alois Vychodil

"I was among the first thirty who ran to the plane. The way I remember it, how many people were there... There was a balk. Bullets were coming out of the plane from machine guns that were on fire. So we watched it burn for a while. Only the fuselage was burning, not the tail or the wings. Then we went to the state farm. We were friends of boys the same age - three were '31, and three were '32. So, of course, we were there. When the machine guns started firing at the plane, it felt like it was right next to us. We were probably less than a kilometre away, even closer. All of us guys jumped in there, in the trench, and I ended up on top of them. And that was the last time I prayed 'Little angel, my guardian', that was the last time I prayed. It was the last time I was scared. Soon, we were surrounded by Germans with cars. They came from Hradiště, Otrokovice and Napajedla and surrounded the forest. And as we ran to the plane, the dirt was sizzling behind me. I thought, 'What is this?' And they were shooting at us. Fortunately, they didn't hit anybody because they were running..."

"On March 15, the Germans occupied us, and on Saturday, March 18, a search came to our house. They turned everything upside down - they were digging in coal, in hay, in straw in the attic, in cupboards. They even looked in the straws to see if there was anything there. There were two in uniform and one in a leather coat. He was pointing there and there - and they were digging through everything. They couldn't unlock one cupboard. So Daddy wanted them to unlock it because he was sure nothing would happen and they wouldn't find anything. So this one guy poked him until he fell. I wanted to go defend Daddy because I hated them. They didn't find anything, so they left. We lived on the corner of May 1st Street, so I went outside through the hallway to see where they were going. They were walking back towards the square, so I wanted to tell Daddy - and he was playing the violin. That's what he always did when he needed to think about something, or something was on his mind, and he was having trouble with it, so he played the violin. My mother and younger sister were sitting in the corner of the kitchen, and they were both crying. I asked Daddy, 'Daddy, did you steal something?' Because I thought they were looking for something, that he had stolen something. 'Oh, no... It's because we're communists,' he said."