Vladimír Kopačínský

"We, first of all General Svoboda had a speech in this copse near the battlefront, saying we were headed for Prešov. It was after nightfall when we got all the way up to the German position. And in the morning, when dawn came, we had to fall back to Krosno. Well, but there were Germans in Krosno. I don't know why they didn't push the Germans out of Krosno first. They started shooting at us from Krosno, they hurt us. That's where I was when my blood came out and I couldn't speak. The cars took us wounded into the Polish city, into the barns, that's where they laid us. Brzezowa, or what was it, Brzezowa. Well, and after a week or so they took us to the field hospital in Jaroslavov. I lay in the field hospital for a week or so. And after a few weeks I was sent to Lviv and on February 21st, January 20th they released me as unfit for duty."

"That was in 1947 - they decided, the mixed committee, the Czechoslovak-Russian committee decided [it was an agreement with the USSR from the 10th of July 1946 to allow Volhynian Czechs to resettle - ed.], that we Volhynians should move into the German border regions, into German places [that is into the Sudetes to replace the deported Germans - ed.]. The transports started already soon after New Year's Day in 1947. But somehow we, they took us towards the end, so we found in Bochov, in Bochov in something like a gulag, and that's where we looked for a home. We found [a house] in Chyše, we were two families there, that couldn't work well. So there was this valley alongside the Střela, the Střela leading to Rabštejn, so we went along there and we met up with our Czechs. They had been given farms, but they didn't know how to work them. When the cows got lice, they rubbed them with paraffin, and the cows got an awful rash from the paraffin. And so the farming committee had them evicted, and we moved in instead. Or me at least. And that's where we founded the co-op in 1950. We moved in from Ukraine in the forty-seventh, managed ourselves for three years, and then founded the co-op. And straight away, because we had our good Czechs there, good workers, but no managers. They were rustics with nomadic ways [?] and so on. So I was the, it wasn't called agriculturist yet, the foreman. So I was the foreman. And, well, fine. A small co-op, but fine. A fine co-op. We had to join the state farm in the sixty-third, when they did all the merging. I didn't like that. They merged me too, took me on as a technician. First off I was the foreman of our farm, for fifteen hundred a month. Then I, I drove the tractor, even though I didn't know how, I had to learn how to drive it with tracks. But that way I earned four-and-a-half, five thousand crowns."

"When the Germans were retreating, the order came to line up at the end of the village in an hour's time - there was a meadow there, a piece of flat ground, and that's where we were supposed to line up, one after the other, so they could march us of to Lviv. Straight along the main road [???]. So I, I was a farmer and as such I had a pig, so I killed the pig on the meadow. But one of the Germans was standing up front, so as to stop me... didn't go forward, and one behind. And the one who stood up front, then for some reason, I don't know why, he went to the back, to have a drink or something. Well, and the three of us or so, three carts, we pushed on ahead, took a turn a bit further down the road, and legged it away. So, well, there were about five of us left. We joined the army. The others didn't, because they were being held somewhere or what. The Germans had them, right."

(Q: "And why did you join Svoboda's army?") "Well hardly as a volunteer [?]. There was no other option. The Soviets had us all mobilised with no exceptions - Russians, Poles, Jews. Then they sorted us out in the house, they sorted the Czechs, each denomination separately. Poles separately, Jews separately. But many Jews ended up with us. The Poles had their own people, they then left for Poland. And we went into... In Rovno, then we passed on behind the front, as in Lutsk... And behind Lutsk lies this place called Hrochovo - the battlefront stretched all the way to there, that's where we held the second line." (Q: "And did you undergo any training in Svoboda's army? How did it go? What was it like?") "We [had] the military training in Bessarabia, in the city of Sniatyn. We trained crossing the river Prut, so that we did cross, because there were no bridges, they were all torn down, so we walked up and down the river so as not to drown as we went on. It was called Prut, and it is called Prut. Well, and that's where we trained. At first they had us lodge in the village, you know, spread out among the cottages, and they left us there three days. Three days later the order came - to the forests! Dugouts! We built dugouts, yes, but a week later the order came to leave the dugouts for health and hygiene reasons. So we built these kind of bungalows, and when it rained, it rained inside as well. So we lived outside. Until I don't know any more how many times. So then we stood, this was in Poland, near the city of Przemyśl."