Alice Uhlářová

“And I see it like it happened yesterday, we went with dad, and he was mowing the grass for the rabbits, he would always teach me how to mow. And for eight years, I took part in a scythe mowing competition at Soláň. And we came home and mom would go to the neighbour for fresh milk and she said: ‘There will be war.’ I told her: ‘Mom, are you crazy?’ And it was just after the Russians stormed in here, so I know that my brother and my mom, they went by car, they went to buy flour, you see. And all sorts of things so that one could have bread. And I remember that we were trying to buy various paints, and lime, and here, there was… At that time, there was not that motorway to Slovakia but there was a main road to Slovakia here and I remember as if it was today, how my brother and his buddies wrote ‘Ivan, idi domoy!’ Or how they turned the street signs the other way, instead of Prague, it was turned back. And I know that mom repeated: ‘This is our end.’ And it’s true that it was like that. One wouldn’t have guessed that it might take so long. And nobody would have believed that the Russians would be like this, that they would occupy us.”

Anděla was married, her husband was one Arnošt, and this Arnošt was – would you guess where he worked? They lived in Ostrava and he worked in [Ostrava-] Zábřeh in hospital and he would bring, for the partisans, here to Bečva and to this Martiňák, he brought various bandages, medications, from that hospital. He brought everything he could, nowadays I would say that he stoled it, took it away, but he simply brought it here and they would take it to Martiňák. On foot or on a cart. And there’s another story then, one day, they brought some things and they hid them here at Nová, in a pub at Prostřední Bečva, and there were arrests and that was it. The Germans were making rounds. So, imagine, they had to, there is a weir nearby, Bečva, the river flows, and they had to put it all in a suitcase, they weighted it with stones and put it to that weir.”