Jiřina Dupalová

“In forty-three the selections started, there were less and less of us at school because we were being assigned to the Reich. So I didn’t wait for anything, I rode home, and the Germans had moved an aircraft engine factory to Semily, so I started work there. I was employed for about a month when my summons came. And the director wrote that I was already assigned to labour in Semily, so I worked in Semily.”

“I remember that I woke up at about five in the morning, and I wanted to go have a drink. We always had a glass of cold water on the window sill, and as I came to the window, across the street - I was walking with my eyes closed, so as not to rouse myself too much - a shot rang out. I looked, and there were German soldiers standing across the street. So I quickly pulled away. Well, and then they started throwing grenades, by the church there. Such a racket, we didn’t know what was going on. It looked like it was happening in the house next door. We had a wardrobe in the wall like this, so we climbed into it and peered out of a crack to see what was going on. Well, and we saw there were lots of dead people there. They hadn’t closed the street off, they let the people go on their way to work, and they shot them up.”