Zdenka Pospíšilová

"My mother was interrogated by the Gestapo. It was like this. We arrived in Opava, and her first steps led to our house. We had legal tenants there - Polish Germans. The event could have happened in 1942. She walked into the house and stood like a scalded man. They had shelves full of trinkets that the German soldiers had stolen in the Soviet Union and Poland from wealthy people. Mum was horrified: 'You're going to demolish my house with all this stuff. How do you imagine?' She spoke German very well and scolded them a lot. They didn't like it and went to the Gestapo to report her for attacking them. We only had one room in our house for things that didn't fit on the truck when we moved to Uherské Hradiště. Then, when we went back to Hradiště, they called my mother to the Gestapo. They told her they would forgive her for the time being but that she must never show her face in Opava again. Otherwise, they would arrest her immediately."

"Someone in Opava claimed that a large number of weapons were hidden in the monastery near the hospital. This was so the Soviets wouldn't conquer it when the front passed. The bombing of Opava began. They say it was American planes. The first bomb fell fifty meters from our house in a field. The others fell like a carpet one after the other. I don't know exactly how many meters apart. No bomb fell on the psychiatric ward. Meanwhile, in the farm hospital, Grandma and Grandpa were hidden in the basement. Their house was not hit by the bomb. It landed in the infant ward next door. They all died there. Bombs continued to fall at the same intervals on other buildings. It was a huge devastation. The bombing continued towards the monastery. In the convent chapel were nuns who had worked in the hospital as medical staff during the First Republic. During the war, they were replaced by 'schwesterpersonal'. The convent sisters came from wealthy families. When they entered the order, they had to deposit a large sum of money. And they built the convent. The raid took place the day before Christmas, December 23, 1944. Someone must have given them a pig, and they were feasting. They invited the priest from Raduňka to the feast that day. So there were fifteen sisters and a priest. The chapel was moved out of the convent building and took a direct hit. They all died there."

"Mum tells me, 'Zdenička, we have to go back to the flat. I've forgotten something. Will you come with me?' I said I would. I don't even remember exactly what she went there for. But Dad didn't know we'd left the hospital cellar. And the front was coming. When we were coming back, we were about a hundred metres from the hospital in the meadow, and bullets started whizzing past our heads. I said, 'Mum, they're shooting at us.' Mum reassured me that I didn't have to worry, that they weren't shooting at us. It was the first time I heard a bullet whizzing through the air. They flew right past my head. We came back to the shelter. There was an embankment, windows covered with dirt in case a grenade fell there. My dad scolded my mum very much at the time for going back there and taking me with her. He was furious."

"The German soldiers retreated through the Opava Institute for the insane. They had a pony with them. They noticed that my grandfather took care of other horses and cattle, so they left him the pony. He was so happy. He was looking forward to showing it to me when I got home from Hradiště. Then the Russians came, and one of the soldiers really liked the horse. He said he'd take it. My grandfather knew the Russians from World War I and knew they were good-hearted, so he refused to give it to him. He said he wouldn't give it to him because he had it for his granddaughter, who he wanted to make happy. The Russian asked him once or twice more to give him the horse. He didn't. So, the Russian shot the grandfather in the head. Grandpa certainly didn't expect it. He thought he knew the Russians well. But they were fed up with the war and looked at our territory as Germany. We weren't in a protectorate, we were enemies."

"Tremendous things were happening in Opava. People were coming from the inland to help war-torn Opava. But the help was dubious. These people mostly threw themselves into the empty houses of the displaced Germans. Also, the houses were sold immediately. Dad came to our house, and a strange man was walking around. He says to him, 'What are you doing here?' He said, 'I'm taking the house. I like it here, and I'm going to the office to book it.' Dad said, 'That's probably going to be very difficult because I'm Czech, and this house is mine.' Those from the inland were moving to Opava in droves. That's why the Germans, who had nice big flats, were one of the first to be moved out. This also applied to the Beinhauer family. They had property, so they were the first ones to be corralled. They could take no more than 50 kilos each. That's how they ended up."

"About six bomber planes were flying over Uherské Hradiště, with escort planes flying below them. We were in a business school that didn't have a basement, and when the air raid came, they sent us home from school. The planes were flying very low. I was running into the garden of our house. Mum was already calling to me from the shelter that Dad had created. That's when I realised there was a small plane flying low behind me. I'm thinking, Oh, my God, he's going to shoot me. I turned around, and the plane just whizzed past me. It was the summer of 1944, hot, so the window was rolled down, and a black man was sitting inside the plane. He was laughing so hard! I could see him clearly. He had a leather cap on his head. It was the first time I saw a black man in the flesh. Until then, I had only known them from pictures."

"We could have as many chickens as we wanted, but it was compulsory to hand over eggs. My mother was told that she had to give as many eggs as she had hens. She only had three hens registered, but we actually had six. She was terribly scared because the Germans were relentless. They didn't ask. As soon as they caught someone cheating, they immediately sent them to a concentration camp. And that's what my mother was most afraid of. There were frequent inspections, up to twice a year. It was interesting that they didn't care how many rabbits we had, they only cared about the chickens. They were called 'chicken-keepers' and came in a team of one Czech and two Germans. When we saw them walking past the linden trees by the hospital gatehouse, my mother had to hide the other three chickens somewhere. But that wasn't easy, so she invented a hiding place for them. We had a big room with a bedroom. The bedside tables were cleared out, lined with newspapers, and as soon as Mum found out the 'chicken men' were coming, she took the three hens and put them in the bedside tables. They first looked in the backyard, then came into the apartment and looked in the kitchen and the bedroom but found nothing. In fact, she, my mother, found out that when the hens were in the dark of the nightstand, they didn't make any sound, and that was our luck."