Master Sergeant (ret.) Boleslav Štěpánek

“Those were insurgent units,” – “And have you ever seen one of those units?” – “You couldn’t normally see them, only in the night. They had wagons pulled by horses – up to ten horses pulling one wagon. They didn’t use roads, they crossed directly through the fields. They also needed some food and so on. So they came to a village and they asked for a calf or a pig.” – “And you said they had a lot of horses. That was because of the bad terrain?” – “Yes, they also had their machineguns on the wagons. There were some Polish villages. Most of the settlements were Czech but there were also some Polish inhabitants from the old times. And Bandera units fought against the Poles. They wanted to drive them away so that Ukraine would not fall back under Polish rule. They simply attacked them and killed them. Polish settlers had to flee to the city, where Bandera units left them alone because of the German army. The Poles certainly didn’t enjoy very good times then.”

“And did you witness any persecutions of the Jews in Volhynia?” – “During the German occupation? I wasn’t an eyewitness but they took all the Jews from the city and put them in one quarter which was then called the ghetto. And they lived there and had to work both women and men.” – “And have you ever been to the ghetto?” – “I wasn’t there. We weren’t allowed to enter. And one day they ordered them to get dressed and get on German trucks. They simply had to. Then they took them to about ten kilometers behind the town. And there the men had to dig their own graves and when they were finished, they had to get undressed and the Germans shot them all. And they filled the holes with them layer by layer.” – “And they killed just the adults or the children as well?” – “All of them.”

“The fields around Nižný Komárnik were bare. There were no trees on the fields because people grew grain there. There was a creek, which streamed from the woods above and it was trimmed with trees because there was enough water for them. So it was shielded by the trees. The leaves did not fall yet. We carried the casualties up the stream to the woods where we handed them to the others. And they transported them with wagons or cars. There was no other way to transport the wounded. Eight people carried the stretcher and we exchanged places to get as soon as we could to the rear, where they were given proper treatment. That was the only way.”

“It was quiet, no attacks, no shooting. And then shrapnel came and hit the top of a tree, it exploded and the fragments shattered all over the place. Next to us, about four meters away, there were the messengers who usually secured communication with the command in case the telephone lines didn’t work. So one of them was injured as well, another one died right at the spot and the Slovak guy next to me had a broken arm. It was a clear cut hanging just on a piece of skin. It didn’t even bleed because the piece of metal was red-hot. So we had to cut the rest of the skin and we bandaged the amputated arm. We threw away the rest, it could not be sewed back anyway since the bone was broken.”

“My uncle was an old man and my cousin was a divorced woman. They had some land, some meadows and I guess about ten hectares of fields. But they didn’t farm on that, they rented it to a family who worked there. And when the harvest was reaped and there was some corn and hay, anything that could be sold, uncle was there and they split the money in half. And then the Soviets decided that they were exploiting the working class.” – “And what did they do with them?” – “Because they were the exploiters they took them to a concentration camp in Kazakhstan.” – “And what happened with them?” – “Uncle died and my cousin survived and she returned to Poland.” – “And when she returned?” – “She spent there about three years.” – “And what were their names?” – “Alexandr Pyšl and Elizabetha Golková.”