Anna Bekárková

"The older children were gone, and my mother was terribly worried about them. Of course, they didn't tell me how they had arranged it and what they had decided and who had paid for it. It was said that the guide was paid for by Uncle Jiří, the one from Brazil. My mother decided that we would go across the border illegally because she had applied for permission to go many times, and it just wasn't possible. I didn't know anything, I was small and stupid. And one morning, my mom says we were going to see Erno and Majka. I was perplexed. We went twice. I made a tirade that I wasn't going anywhere. Mom was upset. Anyway, we took the train to Znojmo, where we waited until night in a shabby pub and then went across the border. There was a larger group of emigrants there, we knew nothing about each other, and Mom and I got lost in the group. So we went back to Znojmo at night and went home, that was in September. The second attempt was in October, again we went to Znojmo, and a gentleman joined us; again we waited in the pub until dark. We were alone that time, no other group came with us. But there, at the end of October, it snowed terribly in South Moravia, and it was freezing, and the moon was shining. And we were running across the border in those conditions, visibility was excellent, so they caught us. We walked for a long time through the forest and then across a plain, and on the plain, the border guards stopped us and shouted, 'Stop or I'll shoot!' and my mother shouted, 'Don't shoot, there's a child!' So nobody fired, but they detained us and took us to these somewhat barracks."

"My mother used to tell this story a lot. My father was told to come to the Gestapo for the first time. That was about June. He knew it was bad, so he warned Valčík. And when it was getting close to the arrest, Dad left on his bicycle. He said he was going to get vegetables. And when the Gestapo came, he wasn't home. And apparently, it was getting pretty wild, so Dad called the hotel concierge to find out what was going on. But the Gestapo porter took the telephone receiver out of the porter's hand and told Dad that if he didn't come back immediately, they would take the whole family. My mother remembered this and told me about it several times. So Dad arrived, and they took him right away. They took Dad and moved us out. And that was it!"