Marie Králová

"From the attic of our house, we watched Ostrava at night as shiny trees were falling from the sky. This was to give the planes a better illumination of Ostrava. We hadn't had any big fights yet. Another time, when my friend and I were in our attic, we heard American planes. It was such a beautiful sound. We were both looking out of the window and suddenly bombs started dropping not far from us. I had never experienced that in my life. The pressure wave threw us off and pinned us to the ground. The planes then continued to bomb the hospital in Opava. My neighbour was in the laundry room with her little daughter when the bomb hit and killed them both. Their bodies were on display in the former Orel hall that was used as a church. The church was no longer standing, it was destroyed. Planes came in occasionally and some bombs fell. But in the beginning we didn't perceive the war that way."

"I wanted to talk about schools. When World War II started, the Germans created a new German school in Kylešovice. Our parents got the permission for us to go to the old Czech one. The headmaster was a German named Kindlar from Kylešovský hill. When we met him, we had to raise our hand and say 'Heil Hitler'. But we didn't want to, so we tried not to meet him. And when it was Adolf Hitler's birthday on the 20th of April, we had a celebration in the Orel (Eagle) Hall. By then Orel had been cancelled. Our headmaster came there in an orange Nazi uniform."