Marie Bartoňová

“Everything went silent, but then suddenly the gestapo rushed to our house in Štramberk. Now imagine a gestapo man came to our kitchen to my daddy and came over to the room. And as the logs were regularly washed and got bent and as he stepped on them they moved and he screamed to the others to rip the floor apart. They suspected guns being hidden in there. As I was a small girl, I began crying. And mummy grasped me and put her hand over my mouth so that they wouldn’t shoot us neither.”

“So I came (to the refinery – editor´s note), but there was somehow from the other side and there was a barbed wire. Behind the wire there was a guard booth and there was an SS man who kept smoking and smoking. And I've been so sad that I thought oh my God, how I would get back home. Yet I could not spend the night somewhere in Opava to miss the train back to the Štramberk. So I crept and crouched down and walked along the barbed fence. And now imagine, I came to the booth. And out of the booth ran another SS man, plucked the revolver and said, halt! He pulled the gun on me. And the other SS man, imagine, they were good people too, he slapped his hand and says, Was das das ist eine Mädchen. I do not know whether I say it correctly. And he certainly saved my life.”