Zdeněk Švéda

“Štěpán Macek had a bunker at Olšanský, where the creek flows through the Valouch family land, and another one here in the forest. I admired his wife, Anna Macková, née Joklíková, that she would always bring him food at night. There was someone named Lamberger in Olšany and he was the head of the economic or transport department. He used to go hunting, where the Rozsocha hill is, and he would only get going if everything was quiet to let the partisans know that they could get moving. And when he didn't go there they would know that nothing was happening. Czechs were bastards. For instance, there was this policeman in Olšany, a Czech person went to him with compromising information about someone, and he just swept it under the rug.”

“There were three storms on the 12th of May. One in the afternoon, one at eight in the evening, and the third one at half past ten at night. And that was the first time it hit our house. You wouldn't believe it, a house twenty metres long and it was all on fire. My uncle Josef was in Bušín, and the only people who stayed at home were my uncle František, my grandfather Josef, my mother, and I. They woke me up and told me to run to our neighbours, the Macek family. In that blaze you could't tell anymore what was actually on fire. Štěpán Macek then ran to the stable and managed to only let out one cow with a calf, that was all he could do. My granddad saved some duvets and threw some drawers into the cellar. When I got back from the Macek household it was not possible to go inside the house anymore. Everything was burning. I saw it myself how it got struck by another lightning. Like pouring oil into a fire. I was there with no shoes, dressed only in shorts and a shirt. The next day the Rýznar boys dressed me up.”