Růženka Hušková

“Suddenly my father remembered that a year earlier some people from Brestov had already left for the Czech country, that was after the war, I didn’t know. It seems it was like now when there are these refugees, we were like that in Bohemia. They promised to give us a house so we went. The train was full of us. There was a train station in Končenice. My father had this huge box, a crate made of wood, blankets, hoes, a scythe, he packed everything just so we had tools to work with when we got there. He was very hard-working. So we rode the train, it was a train for people but at the back it was a goods train. So we got to Bohemia, there was a woman in Jevišovka waiting for us, it used to be called Frélichov. She had already come there a year earlier and she was a widow so we went to her house. Her house was huge. We also went to the local church, I was at the church for the first time and they were singing a Croatian song. I know it from here, from Brestov. And I started to go to a local school as well. We had the school report, or what do you call it, from here. So we were holding it in our hands and the boys around us were laughing at us. Mine had fives written all over it and so did my friend’s report. And they thought they were ones.” (Czech grades go from 1 to 5, five being the worst, Croatian grades are the opposite)

“It was nice there, very nice (in Frélichov). We were three families, sleeping at those people’s house. We slept on the floor or wherever. And for three months, so you know how it goes. In the evening girls and boys would get together, they would sit on those benches and they would sing. So we also learned new songs from them. It was nice.”