Alžběta Ešnerová

"We had a teacher whose teaching tool was the cane. If the boys brought something up, he usually put them on the bench and beat them and beat them. In the old days, of course, the morning at school used to start with a prayer. So we had to pray, and if the teacher was in a good mood, we could sing. That rarely happened. Most of the time, the headmaster would come in, and you could tell if he was in tune or not just by looking over his standing glasses. I had the misfortune of being the only left-handed girl in the class. When I picked up a pencil in my left hand in first grade, purgatory began. Oh, my God! Hands out in front of him, and he beat, and he beat, and he beat. In the afternoon, my hands were swollen because of the terrible wounds. And if I didn't know how to do something, not just me, but everybody, and the spanking wasn't enough, or the teacher wasn't in the mood to use the cane, we had to kneel in the corner in the pea box. That's what we knelt on. It was worse in the winter. By then he had already selected a log with sharp edges, and you had to kneel on that. Nowadays, some people might think you're making it up, but that's the way it really was."

"At the end of 1945, my brother went to Svitavsko and took over a farm in the village of Grándorf (Hradec nad Svitavou). But the farm was completely looted. The owner was alone with four children. At the very end of the war, the Russians came and wanted to take the horses from the stable. The man defended them, because horses were a big asset in those days, and the Russians shot him. They turned the house into an infirmary. My brother started working there as a caretaker in the autumn, I don't know what month it was. Sometimes he came by bicycle, because it was about thirty kilometers away. He said that the German woman and her children were hungry. So he came with horses and loaded potatoes, feed for the cattle, flour so that the woman could bake something and they could have something to eat. They were Germans who lived there normally. A year passed and in June or July 1946 we moved to Gransdorf. That was the first time I saw a train, I was in a new world. In the barn there were two skinny cows that were like ladders. There were two guinea fowl, which I saw for the first time in my life, no chickens and nothing else. The German woman had left. They were taken in stages to Germany. She left in the morning and we arrived in the afternoon."

"As long as we lived in Trpín and Kněževes, bread was baked at home. It was a terrible job. It was baked once a week or fortnight, depending on the weather and the time. Then a huge pit was brought in, sourdough was put in, then flour and warm water were poured in. Mum mixed it up, and there was a little shovel, a spade it was called, and us kids had to run around with it and mix the dough. And when the dough was kneaded, then mom would finish it off. Straw wrappers were brought in, and mom worked. She had to roll it out, make loaves and put them in the sacks. My godmother had a bakery next door where dad was already heating. It was flooded, then big logs were piled in there. When it was hot, the coals were tucked away. That's what the brush was for. And dad would get up on these steps, I can't remember what it was called, and he'd get a shovel and mom would always tip a loaf on it. She'd use a pen to wash it with water so it wouldn't be floured, and dad would put it in. And that would bake maybe twelve loaves at a time. And to keep us from going on it, there was a big board up in the hallway under the ceiling and that's where the loaves were put so we wouldn't climb up there and taste it. We had teeth and we were hungry forever."

"In those Pavlovice, those builder's songs: 'Now we've got what we wanted, let's march, and march, and learn, and orders.' Warm-up in the morning, and in the evening there was an order before dinner. That's when the mail was handed out, and it was a matter of who was doing what. But that wouldn't be me! There were lice in my hair and the governess liked me like a pain in the ass. And my hair was always getting ruffled. We'd stand in line with the girls and she'd always call me to the front during the order. There must have been a military salute. She'd call out, 'Burešová, over here!' She untangled my hair and looked for lice. Then I could go. It was always like that. There wasn't a week that went by that I didn't have a conflict with her. One day I got nervous and I said, 'Girls, cut my hair off.' So they cut it off. It was like a funeral because they were all crying. We weren't a normal classroom. It was like the army in there. All on command. That was the hours when we marched on the playground with a log that we held from right to left, and the gramophone played build-up songs and you had to march accordingly. That was our gym class."