Corporal Jiřina Vítková

“There was a creek there, and when there was peace, we went there to wash ourselves. We also took some water to a kettle to make tea. The contact man of my father, an older man, he was over fifty, said: ´Girls, where did you bath, before the turning or after it?´ We said: ´After the turning.´ ´Did you drink the water?´ ´No, but we have brought it with us to make tea…´ ´So come with me, I will show you something!´ So we went and about five metres after the turning there was a German lying in the creek, he had no shoes, no trousers any more and his arm was missing. Thus the water we had washed in was all flowing over him… Well, war, isn´t it… But it was no comfortable feeling.”

Have you ever witnessed persecution of the Jewish population? – “Not directly, but I knew that it was happening. Only when I was attending the eleven-year school, our classmates were Jews too. When we sometimes came to school, their places were suddenly empty. We didn´t speak about it, but we knew. We just looked at each other and it was clear to us. We all were frightened. The disappeared ones were many. The Germans took mostly the families at night. So we were not able to see it… I don´t know of anybody who would come back.”

“In the Czechoslovak territory there were no more hard fights taking place, but German units were undermining everything during their withdrawal. And it was the worst. I remember that we arrived in a village at night. Everywhere there were lots of snow and there was an ice crust on the road. When we arrived in the village, there was nobody anywhere, just dogs were barking. There was light only in the clergyman´s house, so we knocked there and the priest came. We asked him where all the people were, that we needed some help with the car stuck in snow. And he turned pale and asked us: ´Please, how did you get here?´ So we described him our way. ´God was with you,´ he said, ´the road is all undermined!´ At that time only the frosted ice crust on the road saved us…”

“In Luck and Rovno there were recruiting places, so called punkts, and there Czech volunteers were applying. It was very spontaneous. Whole families were applying – the father, his sons. Often even underage boys were applying who were adding their years of age. There were many cases like that. Even women were applying. And nobody ever asked – what for it. We knew that we were going for death, although we were imagining it at that time more as in a cinema. In reality it was then completely different. But to tell the truth, I would go there again. I don´t want to make any hero of myself, but I think that I would go anyway.”

“I was mainly a health worker, only I was not in a hospital, but directly at the infantry regiment. At the same time I worked also as a telephonist. Thus I represented several services. Every while they brought an injured to us. Our task was to give him first aid and then they were taken further, to a field-hospital. The injuries were various, but mostly splinters, scorches… When you get injured, you don´t feel it at all at the first moment, only after a while, when it started to bleed, it started to hurt too. Everybody had pains, everybody wanted to live and everybody wanted to survive. All of us loved the life and the things waiting for us here in the liberated homeland. Sometimes we also helped with letters to those who could not write on their own.”