Josef Feld

"We were in the hut and the Russians started blasting the woods and grenades started falling around the hut. So there we were, shaking with fear, wondering what to do. Every now and then a grenade would go off in the area. We were afraid if a grenade flew into the hut, it would kill us all. That was kind of the biggest fear we had. The windows were closed with wooden shutters. When the German army was still there, some German soldiers stopped by and brought some chicken for us to cook for them. These were soldiers who spoke Czech. They were from Silesia somewhere. Silesia, it was such an unfortunate place that when the Germans occupied the Sudetenland, the Poles occupied Silesia. And when the war started, Silesia was occupied again by Germany, so the men had to go into the Wehrmacht. Those soldiers said to us, 'Wait until the Russians come, you'll see what a bunch of bastards they are.'

"Towards the end of the war, in November, there was an American air raid on Brno. The planes were returning from an unsuccessful raid in Germany, so they had the Brno railway station as an alternate target. Unfortunately, they didn't drop it on the Brno railway station, but on Na Ponávce Street, under that street the Ponávka River flows, today it's Příkop. My grandmother's whole business was destroyed. Three bombs fell on that company, everything was destroyed. I was in the shelter under that house. I used to go to the town hall in Cejl. When there was going to be an air raid, there was always a preparation first, they only sounded the horn twice, so we went home from school, and I always went to my grandmother's because it was a short walk from Cejl. Then when there was an air raid, when the horn would sound that wailing tone, the whole family would go to the shelter under the house. Well, we all survived the air raid, but everything was destroyed."

"I didn't go to religion, but then Father Albín Kvita came to teach religion from the Husovice church. He was such a young priest. He said: 'What are you going to sit in the cloakroom for? Come in, you can be here.´ He gave me the catechism, he didn't know me, but I went to religion. Even though I wasn't baptized, I was an altar boy in that church in Husovice. He was very friendly and very popular in Husovice. The whole of Černé Pole and Husovice came to his Sunday sermons. He was very popular, during the war he had such a strengthening sermon. Just an excellent man."