Josef Schicho

"I walked into the room and there were about, I don't know, twenty people lying there. They were all lying on the floor, there was one blanket, but no more. They were just lying there. And they were moaning. I know that one elderly farmer had his face so broken that all we could see on it was bare flesh. He was lying there. Then another one, there were three Austrian young men, they were here as labourers from Klagenfurt, they were here too. A head teacher, a medical student, a doctor from Cetviny, I was lying among them. And others, about twenty. I can't say exactly, anyway, I was lying there. I had to keep my head tilted because of the wounds. Yes, that was the first day."

"And then we were driving past my home, past my parents' house. I saw that there was already a Czech flag hanging in the window. My father had never had a Czech flag. Then we drove on and a local Czech saw me being taken towards KZ, the internment camp, as it was called in Czech. We got there and they herded us up to the KZ building, to the warden. He was a Czech partisan, that's what we called him, 25-30 years old. When we entered the office, there was this Czech and two others sitting there. Then he said with such a face: 'Stand up!' I did, and so did my friend. Then we had to turn around and then it came. Then they were slapping us. But how! Until I was covered in blood. Then they threw us towards a door, into a toilet, poured cold water on us. Then they locked us up. It was the 30th, 31st, something like that."