Rut Dřevojánková

"I remember that we were all happy that the war was over, but we almost cried when the soldiers left. We were standing on the bridge at home and one soldier was handing something towards me. Because I was small, I was afraid to go to him. But there was a braver boy, so he immediately went and took it. And the soldier was motioning him to give it to me, he wasn't allowed to get out of line, so he handed it to him. When he saw that the boy gave it to me, he smiled. But who it was, whether it was the one who lived with us or somebody else, I don't know. I got this beautiful wooden box, carved, and it was empty. It got damaged over time and I don't know where it ended up."

"What I remember was my astonishment and I couldn't understand it when I got up in the morning and opened the kitchen door and there were a lot of soldiers lying on the straw. I didn't know what they were or anything, so I was very scared and went back to the room. That's where my grandfather lived - the old man, so I got into bed behind him and I was shaking as I was afraid of what was going on. He didn't know anything either when they came in the night. It was only my parents, because they slept in the kitchen, so they knew what was going on. They had to go in the night and prepare the straw for them to have a place to sleep. They were only there for a couple of days until the school was emptied and they made some rooms in the school where they could sleep. And what year was that? 1944. I guess it was more like sometime in the fall, because I was already in school. How long were they here then? They then moved into the school and the school was in the lower pub and there were all nine classes, we were taught in the school. They were here until the end of the war, they left when the war was over."