Věra Fexová

“Well then, when there was a rebellion in Prague and the end of war was near, I thought it would happen so that the Germans would run away. I thought the guys guarding those Russian prisoners fled. But then, it's been a couple of years back, when I learned that as the Revolutionary Guards were established, they killed those Germans. They are buried there somewhere outside the cemetery. I did not know that, they did not tell me, I only learnt from a girl, who returned to Brno. She was a sister of my friend, and told me, when she found out. The prisoners lived there until the end of the war. And when the Germans fled or just disappeared, we could take the prisoners home. Because they had to stay there until May 17 and wait for an evacuation to get back home. In order to avoid having to feed them in the buckets, we each took some of them and brought them to our homes. So I brought two Russian prisoners and two Australians back to our home.”

“But I was afraid that, if I went [to emigration] my parents would suffer. Because my uncle, father of that cousin who left, one of my mom's brothers, then got locked up. He served ten years in prison. Not due to his son, but here in every district... People who are as old as I am, they do remember. This was all through the republic, in each region a group of people, who were uncomfortable for the new regime, were gathered and were made counter-state, those who worked against the state. And they were locked up for several years and worked in concentration camps, such as in Jáchymov or elsewhere. And they worked there in the mines, just like my two uncles did. One was the youngest brother of my mother, and the other one was his brother, who was the second oldest, whose son had escaped. Amongst other things, they worked in the Jáchymov mine.”