Božena Frolová

"Those Ukrainians were shooting at [the German soldiers] terribly, they had guns. Well, imagine, they came and started chasing us to school. They would have burned us there. But my uncle was so terribly clever that somewhere in a back field he got on his horse and rode to get help. There was a mill there, and there was a German in the mill. He was very friendly with us. Because we couldn't explain it in German to those soldiers, he immediately also - he had a car, he got in it, drove there, talked to them. There were already a lot of people outside the houses, they were throwing us out of the houses. They would have burned the village, they would have [set fire]. But we didn't shoot because there was no man. The men were in the war."

"And we went for fourteen days. Imagine, that journey would take a day and a night today, and we drove for fourteen days. They stopped with us in a meadow somewhere and said, 'Give us děngi, we're not going any further' - and it was. They wanted money! So we had this handy grandfather there, so he collected money, and whoever had money gave it. But do you know what it is in those wagons - sleeping there for a fortnight and everything? No hot food? When we arrived at the Slovak border in Mukachevo and got off, the Slovaks welcomed us beautifully, all honour! They had bread, they had big jams, I don't know if they had any coffee or drinks. Then the Slovaks welcomed us with food. And there we got on a normal train and went to Hranice. It was not easy there. The best thing was, it was an experience, us as children. I don't know, it was DDT or something, the powder. We didn't wash, we were all in a terrible state. So they blew our heads with it and they blew it down the guys' pants - and our grandfather came out like this and we were screaming like horses. We were laughing so hard, like kids. They were scared we'd bring them something, some lice or something."