Erna Pokorná

“It once happened that Mr. Andrusiv came to see mum that how the transports went on the main track to Třebová that some of the Russian refugees managed to escape and they walked and came to Skutče and someone must have given them advice that he was Russian, so they came to see him and it was winter in 1945/1945, sometime in January or so. He hid them in a shed near to a quarry, they were two of them but it was very cold there and they were afraid to make fire so that nobody could see that there was smoke so he came to see mum if she would take them here. And of course, my mum said if someone helped my son, I had to do it. So, she took them here. Upstairs, there is a little narrow room over the main corridor, so they put them there, they washed them, they were full of lice, and they were closed there, poor men, but they had a bed there, they had duvets and they were warm, so at least this.”

“Cousin Ervin who went with him to Auschwitz came back and brother did not, he took care of him all the years. He probably did not tell the truth to my mother, I do not know how it happened, we never found out. Because he told to my mother that when they were abandoning the camp, he told to Jiří: ‘Wait here and I will be right back.‘ And when he came back, Jirka was not there. They shot everyone who could not walk, and Ervin hid under the dead people, I do not know for how long he lied there, he narrated it like this and Jirka walked in the transport, in the death march and he got typhus and died there.And then Ervin, when everyone had left and it was calm there, he walked and a Pole, a farmer, there was a house, so they hid him in the attic and he stayed there for some time and then he set on a journey... well, he came back.”