Růžena Dlabalová

"My sister's name was Marie and my brother's name was František. When he was born, my grandmother said, 'If you don't name him František, I won't cradle him.' And then—she was really fond of František—the boys were fifteen or sixteen and had to go into the army. They were in the army and František was a miner, he was in the barracks in Benešov - and when he blew the trumpet, you could hear him all the way here, in Jírovice. My grandmother loved him very much and then they had to go to that war and there in Hungary, in Szolnok, they shot him. He was above them on some... he was in a tree, on guard, and somebody shot him down. And so he died and she, poor thing, had nothing, they were poor, so she had to have a certificate from the mayor and she went to that Szolnok for his funeral. She went to his funeral and she said that she had to have a certificate from the mayor, as I say, and so she went there by train and she said that some officers, I think it was some of the senior officers, they were the ones that led her. And so there he is buried in Hungary, and there's a plaque on the chapel here, František Brabec."

"We went to school in 1938 and then the war came. The SS came here in Jírovice, they had a commando at the Chotovinskýs', Ulfik was there and Fromme was there. These were Germans, and we were terribly afraid of them, because if someone took a sheaf from the field or something, they would immediately beat them. Nothing was allowed. We were scared, they went around the houses - how many chickens we had, how many rabbits we had. Everything was hidden as much as possible. It was misery, it was misery. There was no food, there was Sana, Sana instead of butter. Everything was rationed. A kilo of sugar for the whole month. Half a kilo of rice for six months. That was it, even the yeast was on food vouchers. It was a terrible time. We had nothing. There was a baker in Kukačka who baked bread. A three-kilo one. And we, as small farmers, had to use the flour that was milled in Hanzlová. So that's what was given there, we got little vouchers for the three-kilo bread. And we always carried it home, and there was a little lump, and we'd chew it off before we brought it home."