Ladislav Kratochvíl

“It was really tough for my parents as they ordered the cattle to be gathered in the village. In the middle of the village, they placed a weighing machine and the Germans decided what head they’d take and what head they’d leave with the peasants. Of course, they’d take the most cattle from those peasants who had six or seven cows. They would take three or four of their cows without batting an eyelash. We had two cows for instance. So they would simply implore them to leave them their cattle. They issued a decree saying that the village had to be moved as it was turned into a firing range. The whole process had two phases. The villages of Otinoves and Drahany were the first ones to be moved. The people, of course, thought that the war wouldn’t last long. People always tend to think this. So some of the villagers from Otinoves moved to our house. After two months, all of us had to move out. Everybody found a place somewhere. We stayed together with two more families in Kanice.”

“They would interrogate us all night long. They kept asking about our alleged escape plan. I didn’t know about anything of that sort. The interrogators were a secret police guy a woman. They would yell at us without a pause and that had would bash my head against the floor. She also relished in describing how they would hang me. I kept telling her that I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. They would torture us for an hour or so in the office that was extremely hot and then they would kick us outside into the teeth-chattering cold. As we were standing outside in the cold at about two o’clock in the night, one of the four guards, who were guarding us with machine guns, said: ‘Why do you shake? Are you cold’? One of the prisoners, who had a broken arm, probably couldn’t take it anymore and said yes. The guard ordered him to bury himself into the snow. Thus my brother had to bury him into the snow. In short, it was a bullying parade. They kept torturing us until, say four o’clock in the morning when a truck came and took us to Vykmanov, which was the headquarters. There they put us into the correction cells, where we spent another fourteen days. Nobody bothered to tell us anything, no explanation was provided to us.”

“When we came back to Rozstání, the house was in a complete mess. It came as a shock to us. It was terrible. They had blown up the bridge in the village and one the pillars had come through our roof, so it got stuck right in the middle of our house. My mom didn’t want to go back and neither did I. I had already made friends there and now I had to leave them again. The village was in a destitute condition. The bridge blown up, it was basically a single great crater. Our fields had overgrown with thistles. But my dad had made up his mind that we’d go back, so we went back. We had to fix everything, put everything back into order. The whole first year we had to toil every day to get it done. My dad bought a horse from the Russians that he used for ploughing the field. It was a terribly tough job but we made it.”

“After we came back from prison, we had to report at the municipal office. I had to come there with my mother and put my signature on a document that said that I’d join the farms collective. We entered the room and there were two guys in there. The name of both of them was Král. One of them was in charge of the office and the other one was his assistant. Both were, of course, party members. They were not the only ones sitting in the room. So we opened the door and Král said: ‘Well, this will be real easy, Francka, you’ll sign this. You’ll enjoy being in the farms collective.” However, my mother said she didn’t need to be in the collective. I told him that we’re meeting all supply quota and that we didn’t see a point in joining the collective. Král replied: ‘Come on, you don’t wanna go back to prison do you?’ So I didn’t really have a choice. I could choose between joining the farms collective or going right back to prison.”