MUDr. Alois Kubík

"I loved it when it was harvest time and the corn was being threshed with a flail. That was beautiful. The grain had to be laid out so that the ears were in a row. There were three or four threshers, and they went one, two, three, four. They were threshing in rhythm. Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta... That was typical."

"There was a gamekeeper in Služovice, his name was Jelínek. He had two dogs named Asta and Víva. He used to hunt rabbits, but used ferrets for that. Those are weasels' relatives. He let a ferret into the rabbit hole. The ferret would scare the rabbit away and the hunter was waiting outside with a rifle. Well, sometimes the ferret mauled the rabbit and ate it. Then the hunters had to dig the ferret up."

"Do you remember the Rotter Pub in Služovice?" - "Yes. They even used to have dances and theatre shows there. There was a big hall where they put empty barrels and boards on them with blankets on top. They hung up a curtain of some sort, and that was the theatre." - "The boards on the barrels made a stage." - "Yes." - "And who made the theatre work?" - "Local people. Dad put it together. Of course, sometimes it was a problem. Young girls didn't want to be cast for old women's parts, so mum had to play those supporting parts."

"The girls walked around with a maypole, reciting this rhyme that went like this: 'Pretty girl, where did you herd geese? On a green mead, in a red hat. Came home crying, got whipped with a stock whip. Mum whipped me with a cane, dad beat me with a boot.'"

"All civil servants had to pass a German language exam. My dad was the head teacher in Lipník then and my mother, who had been through German schools, gave the people who had to take the exams advice. I recall there was a janitor at the school in Lipník and his name was Vagrčka, such a simple, very nice man. I remember him pacing the yard and shouting loudly, 'Ich heiße Alois Vagrčka!' "

"It was Sunday when I was visiting a friend in Dolní Újezd. I was on my way back and then I heard shooting coming from Přerov. The guerrillas were impatient and had provoked an uprising in Přerov too early. Many civilians lost their lives there. Among them was our math teacher. I don't remember his name now, but he was supposedly trampled by the Germans."

"Since I came from a 'mixed marriage', me and also Miloš Hložánek who also had a German mother, we were examined to see if we were the Germanic type. The doctor was supposed to find out if we were Germanic. He concluded I had a Russian face. I didn't pass and I wasn't drafted, and neither was Hložánek."