Jiří Pavlica

“We were in the basement and suddenly there was this roar from upstairs: “Raus aus dem Keller!” So all of us had to get out and there was this…that was the first time I saw a man with foam at the mouth they were completely… A machine gun and it seemed like he was going to shoot us right there, we were pushing our way up the stairs because apart from us there were two more tenants, so the families as well, actually there were three families, and what happened was that either a tank or a cannon launched a missile that hit our house and shot through the load bearing walls and half the house fell down, which made the guy run away and leave us there, he left us there and we went back to the basement. ”

“There was this wooden house next to us, some Mrs. Šostíková lived there, she was an old lady, I used to go to hers for milk as a boy, she used to have a cow, it burned down, the house, and I went there to have a look. That was right after those Germans ran away or surrendered, I arrived and I found it, where the cowshed was, there was Mrs. Šostíková kneeling on all fours, she was so large, next to her the cow with a ruptured stomach, yellow suet [pouring out]…”

“My grandfather was deaf since World War I, he didn’t hear at all and he was under the impression that nothing was going on and maybe he sensed a vibration from a cannon or some tank and he went outside and some automatic gun or what got his arm, he had, I don’t know, twenty holes right here. So straight to the hospital, Zdeněk [presumably the witness’ brother] was trying to drag him there and they said: “Amputation is the only choice.” He didn’t want that so he died in that hospital in 1947, he’d been lying there for two years.”