Věra Smilková

“During the war we had to give up a pig. One whole live pig and then five kilos of lard from our slaughter. You had to give all of that ahead of time, and then you could have your slaughter. Well, and my parents always kept one extra pig in secret. And the mayor, the chairman, whenever they came to check on things (on hens and cattle too, it all had to reported, right), he always gave the farmers in the glades a heads up that there was an inspection coming. So they could prepare for it. So they could hide whatever stuff they kept illegally. [Q: And where did you hide it? Do you remember?] All kinds of places. We’d take it up into the hills (the forest). We’d stick the hens into sacks, and Dad even had a kind of cage for when we had a smaller piglet. There was a pit there, where we threw all kinds of things, tins and the like - we called it ‘hať’. So Dad would have it all made up already, and all we had to do was bring the pig in the cage. The hens as well. We’d chuck them into a sack and then hide them among the weeds. We’d give the pig some milk to drink to keep it quiet. Oh, we did all kinds of things...”

“And we had three partisans staying with us, and one of them was that there Žárský [Karel Žalský – ed.]. well, and they wanted to get to Sirákov. To the border between Jasenná and Liptál. So Dad led them. And because the route led across the mountains, they lent Dad a torch. So they arrived at Sirákov, and there were lights there - electricity, right. So they released Dad and told him he could go back home. Well, but Dad said - Dad told us this - that he’d forgotten the torch there. Except at the time... Well, his life was at stake, right. He didn’t know who they’d meet, and so then Dad, when he remembered, he went back. Except they had some kind of password, and Dad knew the password, so he went back and he called it out, but the chaps had disappeared. They’d all gone to bed already. He told us: If I hadn’t known the password, who knows if I had gone back at all. That’s how it was.”