Helena Vavrošová

"It was such a beautiful day, fresh greenery, the sun was shining. I sat among the currant bushes and prayed. It was so close that I could hear their sentences being read. They were brought, five people, by car from the prison in Český Těšín. They didn't know then that they were sentenced to death. They were read it there. I didn't understand the words, but I could see that they were reading from something. And you could hear it. The sun was shining, the greenery was beautiful, the sky was blue, and these people arrived, and here were the gallows already standing, and here they were being hanged. And our baker, the tenant, came in and said, 'That was fun, that was a merry-go-round!' That was terrible."

"My father then said they lay on the ground on their stomachs for two days. When he needed to get up, he had to jump up in a hurry and ask if he could leave to relieve themselves. They waited for the wagons and were taken directly to Dachau. They were there for about two months. Then they were taken to Mauthausen. It was already overcrowded there, they were building a branch to Gusen. There were barracks there, but the landscaping hadn't been finished yet. There was a stone quarry, they went to work in the stone quarry. My father said there were a hundred and fifty stairs. They still had to carry stones on their backs in the evening, they were paving and doing landscaping. The ground was wet. He was telling what atrocities were going on there, but only after three or four months. And it must have been dark in the house and he talked quietly. He said he was terribly afraid. My brother was only five at the time. He said there were a lot of people who went back there because they said something at home, the children brought it up and then they had to go back. That's what my father was afraid of. He told us that he was telling us so that we children would know that it was true when something was written about it."