The Red Army consisted of old, illiterate men and criminals.
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Karla Říčánková was born in 1931 in Brno. She grew up in Mokrá, a village near Brno, in a family that kept horses; her father worked as a carter. (Memories of Karla Říčánková have also been recorded as a witness to the dramatic story of the famous local family of the businessman Aleš Kaprál. They had a villa near Mokrá in Říčky and it was plundered by the Red Army soldiers at the end of the War. See also memories of Eva Kaprálová on www.memoryofnation.eu .) Karla Říčánková’s father was in contact with partisans from the resistance group “Wolfram” (parachutists) and their commander capt. Josef Otisk. Karla Říčánková recalls the arrival of Red Army in her village in April 1945. As they were afraid of plundering, they hid all their valuables. „I expected Russian soldiers being handsome, but they were all old men!.” She knew about the plundering and the rapes that the soldiers had comitted in the region, but as she says, she was not afraid of them, she even had friends among them. Her memories of the soldiers are sometimes rather humorous, like that of a soldier who collected and sent home broken gilded china as he thought it was gold. After the War she worked in a paper mill and then in the local amunition factory.
