Anna Matějková

“We were doing forced labour and I came home after a night shift. We arrived from Adamov and then we went to the Jepa department store and since it was on November 20th, we thought that we would buy something for the St Nicolas Day. There was a warning announcement that an air raid was imminent and people were urged to go home, and we thus went home and we turned on the radio, because even though the sirens sounded, it was not really a full alarm, but when we heard on the radio that they would be bombing Moravia, we decided that we would go to the basement and suddenly we could already hear the roar of the airplanes.”

“Germans confiscated a truck from us. We had our sofa and clothes loaded there since we wanted to save at least some of it. Soldiers were everywhere and we got afraid as the front was approaching and we decided that we would rather move to a smaller town, but the Germans stopped us, and my mom, who could speak Germans, pleaded with them and she promised that our driver would turn back and that he would certainly go back with the truck. But I don’t know if he really went there or not.”