Nina Burláková

“After the war, when all the nations in Europe agreed that the Germans, Czechs, and Ukrainians would all return to their homelands, we decided that we would also return. Those who didn't want to, didn't have to, those who wanted to leave, came back. The journey was long, we travelled over three Sundays. We drove such cattle drives. Do you know what it is? These are the closed wagons in which cattle are transported. That's how we lived for three, almost four Sundays. But we were the last, so we drove the fastest. It used to take six to seven weeks. Since there were no locomotives after the war and everything was broken, we always drove at night. We had protection with us - Russian soldiers. But first we had to get into those wagons. There were four to five families in each wagon. We couldn't take much - mostly just clothes, some duvets, but hardly any furniture, we only had a chest in which we put a few pieces of dishes. There was a hot stove in the middle of the wagon and could cook potatoes here.”

"The war began on June 22, 1941. I remember that day very much. I didn't know it was that day, my mom told me later. I was sleeping, I was three and a half years old, and sometimes at two thirty in the afternoon my mother woke me up. There was a terrible noise and rumble. We had it a hundred kilometers to Brest. The Germans started the war on Russia via Brest. Airplanes flew right up to us. Nobody knew what was going on. Suddenly, planes were dropping bombs in the afternoon. Everyone ran to the fields. There are large spaces in Russia. We had the nearest forest, I don't know exactly, between the fifth and tenth kilometers. We were there for about a fortnight. The men dug dugouts there and we lived in them. When we were lying down, as the ground trembled and shook under the bombs, dirt was falling for miles. It rustled so much that it was impossible to sleep."