Helena Zemanová

“It was just horrible, you know, like Hitler... As you had those people born in a certain year, like Helenka, my cousin, and they would take them to Germany to work there. There were those people born in a certain year they would take to Germany to work. And most of all, they would liquidate the Jews, which was just ugly. There were no ghettos, so they would shoot them right on the spot. And the Czechs, they were helping a lot, like saving some of the Jews. As quite often, they would also leave little Jewish children at doorsteps at night. With a note stating: 'Just take it.' It happened to Czechs in most cases. And the Czechs would take the kid and they would raise it. After the war, some of them were claimed by their parents. I knew one, his father came for him, who had been saved by the Czechs.”

“But I forgot to tell you about this Russian famine” - “Go on, tell us what happened.” - “Before we went away, forty people a day would ask us for bread.” - “After the war, in 1946 or 1947?” - “Before we went away, there were hordes of Russian people begging for bread. We couldn't feed them all, they came begging for bread, they would work for food, those poor devils. And I will tell you just this one story. There was this thirteen-year-old boy who approached my mother, telling her he was starving, as there were children coming, begging for food. He approached my mother, but we had no bread left we could give him. But she had some boiled potatoes, so she gave him boiled potatoes. And he went along this railway line, where trains were going. And he would drop those potatoes into the line, as he was shaking all over. And he would pick them up and there was this train coming, the engine whistling and so. We would just watch, expecting him to be run over by the train. But it didn't happen, slowly, he would gather all the potatoes and leave just before the train would arrive. As he valued it more than his own life, that was the state those people were in. So there was quite a famine going on there.”

“There were indeed those Ukrainian gangs going around, killing Poles, those Banderites. They said the Poles oppressed them, when the Poles were in power. And after the Russians came, sometimes they would come to a village to get provisions and the Banderites would ambush them and kill them. And after that the Russians would exile the whole village to Siberia, it happened all the time in fact.”

„After the war there was famine in the Russian areas of Brjanská and Kalužská. And every day there were forty people a day at our door begging for a piece of bread: ‚Eat to Ukraine.‘ They´d do anything you wanted for a piece of bread. There was a wounded one, legless, just with crutches, swearing at Stalin, Soviet country, communist party, anything. His wife died of hunger, his kids did too. And he came back from the front like this and there is nothing to eat there anymore. So they came to us to Ukraine begging for a piece of bread. Two children came about nine and ten years. Mum was crying over them. It was winter and their legs were covered in pieces of cloth. Their parents died of hunger. Mum fed them, they were full of lice. They looked so poor we all cried over them. We fed them, they slept on straw bed. They woke up in the morning, mum gave them food in a rucksack and they had to march on. I don’t know, what happened to them, but we just could not keep them in.“

„It was an unfortunate thing, that they always... Germans, when they went for cereals, for their provisions, the Bandera group ambushed them and beat them. And then the Germans came and burnt the whole village down. That´s how they used to deal with it. When the Russians came, that´s what they did with them. I remember about six soldiers came to collect their food provisions, and the Bandera men attacked them. And I suddenly saw, how the Russians ran as fast as they could. And the Bandera men were on horses with a telescope, they chased them to the river and killed them there. And the second day, the Russian army came searching the Bandera group. And they searched them even in a wardrobe or I don’t know where. I know that mummy was fighting a Russian guy over my dad´s winter coat, he pulled and mum pulled towards her too. He took the stick he used to clean his gun with and cut her cheek and beat her back. She took him and threw him away. She had so much force to throw him out of the door and locked herself in. but when we came out, we saw as all soldiers... each of them carrying a loaf of bread and some spam we had, they took everything away. And he was threatening to burn out house down. And I cried and begged him and he said: ,Just for the child, only for her!‘ And he left. So that´s the kind of experience we had. That was in Zaritsk, in the Ukraine village.“

„In Germany, when Hitler came, so he promised the independent Ukraine and made a kind of army from them, Stribky he called them (editor´s note: units of young Ukraine nationalists). And they helped him hunt Jews. There were no ghettos, where they´d put them. They simply killed them all straight away. In Rovno, at least they said, I don’t know precisely, but there they killed around 16000 Jews and all that within a week or two. They had to dig their grave and a one line of people followed another. And these Ukraine boys were catching Jews. I saw them chasing and catching them. I can say I saw the Soviets taking a family to Siberia, they were crying and waving at us; they were taking a Jewish family to death and they were crying and waving too. And when they killed all the Jews out, then Hitler started with the Ukrainians and they took the guns and ran into the woods and became the Bandera movement. We were hiding from them too. We would go sleep in a field at night to hide. We were afraid, because they´d ambush and kill us, they were plundering etc. They killed about three hundred Czechs. But they also killed the Pols. I saw the Pols running and the Bandera men running after them and beating them to death. Those kinds of things I saw as a child, I can say it was just sad.“