Karel Punčochář

"It was called Nikolayev. I suppose it has a different name today. It used to be quite big town - sort of a military town where the officers lived with their families. Later on, only the guards and a few people remained there. One day we found a barrel full of meat in the kitchen. It was warm outside and the meat was already stinky but we were starving...what a shame, we thought. If it wasn’t stinky we could have had a great goulash. It must have means that they were running away from here fast, they even forgot the meat. I found a piece of leather sole so I took it with me. It helped me on my way. I exchanged it with a Ukrainian or Pole - I’m not sure who they were - for bread and piece of curd and piece of butter. I thanked them and that was it. In this way we retreated all the way to Stryi. Thank God they made some pasta and goulash for us the next day. But that was it; we didn’t get anything else, not even bread. Supplies and everything else was disorganized, it was very demoralizing. You can’t even imagine it."

"The door opens slowly and someone is waking me up. I’m waking up and see the kitchen lights on; also the lights in the other room are on. My mother - my step mother - comes to me crying: ´Charles get up and come say good bye to your father.´ You can imagine how I felt. My dad said good bye to me and told me: ´Don’t leave your Mom. You should stay together otherwise they will expel you out of this apartment, ´ dad warned me. I assured him: ´Don’t worry, Dad, I promise. I have nowhere to go anyway.´ It was good that we stayed there together. I had my own room; my mother was cooking from time to time. We used to have a few chickens too. My mom got a job as a cook at the children's nursery so she could bring me left over food and also food for the chickens. So we were quite fine actually. The Germans also took all of our family pictures; picture where my dad stands in police uniform holding his hat and sward. You could see the hole in his coat cut by the sword. The German officers used to wear swords too; they were attached to their coats. They wore belts underneath, but their swords were outside of the coats." "So where did they take your father?" "They told us that he has been condemned to ten years for espionage. They said that he was taken to Sakhalin Island. The German guards were taking the packages and money that Mom was sending Dad. She always came back crying. We were skimping all we could to be able to send more to Dad. But he wasn’t alive anymore. They beat him to death during his questioning. That was after the occupation by Hitler. Not the occupation of Sudetenland but the protectorate." "That was in 1939?" "That’s right." "So you don’t know exactly when he died? They didn’t even let you know?" "No, not at all."

"The school was just great. We even had a library there. Those who were coming from Czechoslovakia always brought books or magazines for the library. Without warning they destroyed our Stromovka Park. (We used to have a park named after Prague’s Stromovka Park). We used to have a theater - a wooden shack of course; a shooting range or the bowling alley, tennis courts and a music stage. We also had two orchestras and a choir. We were a real community. We even had a small soccer field where we used to play as young boys. We wanted our grammar school to be completely Czech, but that was impossible. We had to attend a Ukrainian school because we were in the Ukraine. Other than that there was also one Russian school; I wanted to attend the Russian one, but they wouldn’t let me."

" ´To the left! Straighten out the lines! ´ The SS officer in leather coat came. He had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He walked down the first line, always stopping in front of someone: ´Get out! Ten steps forward and turn around! ´Then he walked further and yelled again: ´Get out! Turn around! ´ He walked down the whole line and gave an order to step four or five steps forward. Then he walked down the second line. He stopped in front of one man and said: ´ Get out and join the men over there! ´And then again: ´Get out and join the men over there! ´And then he stopped in front of me. He was starring at me and I wondered what he might want from me. He looked at me and said: ´What is it? ´ I replied: ´Czech.´ He didn’t say a word and left. He pulled out eight men all together. He and another German soldier came to them and ordered them to take their pants off. They all were circumcised. This SS officer was some kind of a specialist from the concentration camp. Those poor naked men all got a shovel and they had to dig a latrine. Some of the stupid Ukrainians and Russians thought it was very funny and were laughing at them. They didn’t know what’s ahead of them."