Jana Kořínková

“[The Unified agricultural cooperative] functioned poorly, then almost not at all. And that was when I attended the town school and composed poems. I used to say to my dad: ‘Hey, dad, I wrote a poem. Members of the cooperatives of Dolní město, what’s wrong with you? You don’t go to part-time jobs, the fields are rotting.’ He told me: ‘It’s nice, but please don’t say it in school.’”

“We had two cows, and I remember that. They were gathering cattle. They left us one of our cows and took the other one to the Kulíks. And I remember my mother and grandmother stood at the doorstep and cried terribly that their cow was being taken away. That’s how they gathered the cattle to have at least something there.”

“The Gestapo came here during that time and often selected people. Drahozal, Dušek . . . We were so scared that as soon as we saw them, we were already shaking, scared of where they were going. I don’t know if it was in the first or second grade when we saw them going to school - right into the building. We were afraid of who they were going there for. Then we found out that they were friends of our new teacher. They came to talk with her, and we were terrified of where they will go and who they will take away.”