Zdeňka Pivrncová

"My mom and my dad, my grandma next door and my grandpa, we lived right next to the woods. And that forest was full of all kinds of refugees during the war, mostly Russians and so on. They were hungry and we tried to feed them. I knew two of them by name. And my parents were brave, probably other parents weren't, because there was no such thing as talk among the children. They took me with them, and I knew what to do and how to do it. We even had to go through two villages - to have something to feed them - to get flour. We went through Brada, we came across the road, there was Zámezí and there was a mill there. And in that mill there was a very nice miller who put flour in our backpack, and we went back again at night."

"I got to the end of Prachov, and there the road went down to another village, and I had to turn right at a curve into Holín. I could already see the cemetery at the end of the road and then it was down to the school. Now suddenly I see on both sides of the road there were German soldiers in the ditches, one next to the other with a gun - a rifle - pointed at the road. But I didn't get it, I just kept walking, just looking from one side to the other. I crossed, then I was at the cemetery and went to school. I don't remember what happened next. Whether I reached the school or not, how it was with the soldiers I don't either, but afterwards I realized that if any of them had just done that, I wouldn't have been here."