Anna Krpešová

"The Russians came and saw that the Germans had fled, that there was a kitchen left with ready-made sirloin steak. They wanted something sour in it, so my mother brought them sauerkraut. And they dumped the raw sauerkraut into the sirloin. When my mother saw it, she got all mad about it, I remember. Then they got drunk and my father took us, me and Stázinka, our maid, to grandpa's because he was worried about us. I was fifteen and Stázka was about eighteen. She was cute, healthy girl. We were scared because they were drunk, but I don't remember being bothered. But it was terrible."

"I remember when the Germans occupied us in March. I won't forget that either. We stood on the steps in front of our house, we could see the main square quite well. They were coming from Frýdlant, heading towards Slovakia. They didn't clear the snow from the roads back then. There was half a meter of snow or maybe even more. They came in sidecars, in those motorbikes with a sidecars. They were tilted to the side. I can still see those Germans. I was so scared of them. And later, the Gestapo also came to us, because there was Gestapo at Bílá and at Hamry, at Ostravačka [Ostravačka Hotel], too."

"Every time there was an air raid, we all went outside to watch. And people from Ostrava who used to go to the shelter in Ostrava would come to spend summers in our apartment in Staré Hamry. They also watched the raids while in Hamry. And then they bombed Ostrava. It was at noon. We were all outside, and we saw the squadron coming. We knew it was the Americans. There was smoke coming from the back of one of the planes. And then I saw them bailing out at Smrk [Smrk Mountain]. I'm sure that it was at noon, because we were running from lunch. Mom was upset, but then she came out too. We could see Smrk from our house when we came out. And we saw SS men in cars as well heading in that direction. They got many of them [the airmen] that day. The pilot was the last one to bail out, his parachute didn't open and he got killed. He was buried at the Hamry cemetery. On All Saints' Day we brought him flowers. But then they dug him up, exhumed him and took him away."