Vladimír Žemla

"I rode a motorcycle to work, it was Wednesday, August 21st. I come to the highway, I cross the tracks, I enter the highway and I see, Mrs. Holišová the old woman was standing at the railing and just clasped her hands. I'm driving on that highway and it was so demolished from those tanks! I didn't know from what. I come to the glassworks, there were two tanks, a cannon aimed at the factory. I arrive at the train station, there were two tanks standing. I'm coming to the factory, I've already learned what happened, people already knew between themselves. That was my twenty-first August. "

"[It was] a village full of Germans, and they were already joining the convoy and leaving. They left, and the next day, almost in the morning, the bridge, which is the only access to the village, exploded. The Germans put a bomb there in the evening, and the last Germans left in the morning and blew up the bridge. But in an hour or two the Cossacks arrived on horseback, it was a vanguard of the Red Army. They waded through the Bečva with horses into the village and mobilized the mayor and the men, there is a forest nearby, so they had to cut down trees and quickly fix the beams of the destroyed part of the bridge and turn it into a bridge structure. That was all during the morning, I remember. And in the morning, the Red Army was advancing and already crossing the bridge. In Choryň, two streams met, one from Lhotka nad Bečvou, which had to go over the bridge, and the other from Choryňská Lhota. In Choryň, the currents of the Red Army descended and marched on Kelč and Bystřice pod Hostýnem. That was Monday, when the Red Army passed through Choryň. There were many of us, everyone was in the streets and we welcomed the Russians [laughs]. "