Jaroslav Teplý

“When the war ended I happened to be in Svratka town for some reason. Suddenly I’ve heard that the republic had been proclaimed. So I thought, well, there will be a clash – the partisans and the local German garrison. So I ran home to Křižánky which is four or five kilometers. In the forest four boys who probably escaped from the front crossed my path. Germans, fully armed with machine guns and all. I knew German because we learned it at elementary school and used to live among Germans. They were hungry. So I brought them along and gave them food in Křižánky. Well, there were many stories like this one.”

“When I was in Bohosudov there was some monastery there. And they brought the nuns to a factory to produce screws. To that factory. Why am I saying that? It is about how a human being can humiliate another human being. Imagine those nuns in their robes along with a rifleman in front of them and a rifleman at the back. What could those women do? Could they have escaped? No. I then saw them standing by the machines in their robes. I can’t even go on…”