Monika Kubátová

“We didn’t know how it was back then. All I remember is that when the first wave began, I was a little girl, and I heard a commotion in the street, so I looked out of the window and saw a load of women pushing prams along, and I shouted at Mum to ask where the children were going. Mum pulled me away from the window and said: ‘Don’t ask.’ Well, and my aunt was in the first wave. Not until forty-eight, when we found them - because we didn’t know which part of Germany they ended up in - did we discover that they’d just loaded them up in cargo wagons here in Ústí and taken them to the borders - but when they got there they didn’t want to let them pass, so they brought them back to Ústí. And this went on for three days apparently, without food or water.”

“My mother’s brother married a lady, and she had a [female] cousin who lived in Dresden. I only know this from her, so it’s not my own experience, but I heard her tell it. A long time ago she lived in Koštov, and her cousin was in Koštov. In 1947 and 48 the Germans who lived in Ústí, if able to, would cross the borders to get something that they had hidden with their relatives, for instance. And it was the same for her. So she’d come to my aunt, she’d be there, say, for three days, they’d give her food and some of the things she had hidden there and needed. And this aunt had witnessed the raid on Dresden that we had seen in Ústí, in the night, the light from how everything burned there. She said that when the air raid began, there was a circus set up in the square. A lot of people started running into the circus because they didn’t want to be in the houses - those were being bombed hard. They were there for some time, and then suddenly the circus manager came and told them to leave immediately because the animals were getting lose, that they could smell the fire, and that they couldn’t ensure safety any longer. So she ran out, there was a soldier there, and when he saw her with her little girl, he caught her, pulled her down and sheltered her under an elephant. That was the only animal to stay put; but when the bombing came closer, it started to move, and so they and the soldier ran. Huge crowds of people were fleeing to the Elbe because they wanted to jump into the water - they didn’t know the bombs were phosphorus. When they neared the bridge, someone yelled at them: ‘Don’t go there, everyone on the bridge is on fire!’”

“Imagine you have before and after school care. You start at half past five in the morning, the children are already waiting there - they shouldn’t be too noisy, then they go to class, where they mustn’t be noisy, then they have lunch, they mustn’t be noisy, and then they go for a walk. When they come back from the walk, there mustn’t be an uproar either. Well, so what do you think I did? I was terribly sorry for the children - they’d come into the canteen and be scolded for being too loud. I took them to a meadow and said: ‘Children, I know it’s terrible, everyone keeps asking you to be quiet and not make a noise. You know what, we’re on a meadow now, there aren’t any houses here, so you do whatever you want.’ The boys asked: ‘Can we yell?’ I just watched - I had a whistle, and they knew that when I blow three short whistles, someone is doing something he’s not allowed to. But I let them be, they kept on yelling, glancing at me all the time, but still I didn’t whistle, and I pretended not to hear anything. After a while one of them said to his mate: ‘Look, we better stop, or we’d lose our voice in a bit!’”