Hermína Eliášová

“Then I witnessed one thing that I wouldn’t want to... It wasn’t pretty. When it was really all taken up by Czechs and the Germans had to pull out. There were Germans there too, they had to go. Some of the men had gotten a better post of some kind, employment, so to say, and they kind of, I can’t say they stuck with the Germans, but they tried to keep things calm... But then, when the Germans had to leave, a certain type of people went a bit all out on those that were with them. But I won’t tell you any more than that because it wasn’t pretty.”

“But I do have one ugly memory. When the war was over and they came up to our uncle’s place - my dad had already died. They took [my uncle] out, sat him on a chair. They came on horses, those boys who called themselves partisans, claimed to be. Those were seventeen-, eighteen-year-old blighters. They dragged him down, held him [?], kept toying with him like this and wanted to get some information from him. They wanted to get something out of him. He sat there, and I can tell you that it’s a dreadful feeling. A really dreadful feeling. They must have punched him two or three times because he bled afterwards. Then they got on their horses and rode off again. So - those were our saviours. That wasn’t nice.”