Dušan Straňák

“We were only liberated by early April. I don’t know where this Malinovsky’s army had come from. There was a chateau – a small fort. The Germans had occupied and defended it. It had deep cellars so everyone gathered in there and they literally fought for this chateau. Machine guns were thundering above our heads and we thought to see only a pile of rubble when we get out. We were surprised not to. The Red Army had taken them by surprise. As if some indigenous peoples they had crawled through some valley of the Trkmanka river and caught the Germans off guard. They rapidly jumped on their trucks and drove away. I think eventually they were captured anyhow. The Red Army overran it rapidly. And what we only saw then... Torn-up wires at the village square, inflated horses laying upside down, corpses everywhere.”

“Rather soon they organized us young men to help the Russians build a wooden provisional bridge over the Thaya river instead of the one blown up by the Germans. The Russians needed to transport heavy machinery to conquer Vienna. So we went to help on foot, all the way to Břeclav. And there we found trenches all around lined with blackened corpses – probably burnt with flame throwers or what killed those poor people. It was an appalling sight. For about a week I helped build the bridge there. Small German airplanes, so-called bumblebees bombed us there. They flew over, dropping bombs. But nothing bad had happened. There was a burnt-out sugar factory there with caramelized sugar reserves. There were full mountains of sugar. Like glass mountains. One could lick it.”