Antonie Robová

“And what I’m going to tell you, you will never forget. That will get under your skin, that’s not something you forget. When we went outside, the whole block of buildings was preserved but the other blocks were bombed, that was terrible. It was truly terrible that was the first time we’ve seen it, I had no idea what bombing could look like, not at all! Imagine that there was a house, completely levelled, and only the head of the owner, Mr. Tyl, was sticking out like a bust. They used to have this small workshop, they made aprons and men’s shirts. They all stayed there, the seamstresses, unfortunately they didn’t survive. And he was the only one who did and his head was as white as milk, like mine, completely white. From the horror! Because he was completely buried during the bombing, he couldn’t move his arms. Just imagine how he must have felt.”

“There were the so-called death transports, those were cattle wagons, that means closed wagons with these tiny barred windows. And that’s what they used to transport those people. Believe it or not, when I think about this… They would stick out their skinny little hands through the bars towards us, to try and get something from us. But you know, there were Germans walking around all the time. There were so many people at the train station. They did have pieces of bread in their pockets, they did have potatoes and what not but they couldn’t give them anything, the Germans would shoot them all so what happened? They used us kids again. We can squeeze everywhere and we’re cheeky without realizing the danger, that was the point, we didn’t realize what could happen to us so we climbed under there through the other side, away from Hrombaba, to the back of the wagons. But we couldn’t reach all the way up, they couldn’t reach all the way down, it was too high up, so we stood on each other’s shoulders or we threw the food up at them. I have to say, that I did see this soldier, who was just a boy, I don’t know whether he felt sorry for us, the children, or if he felt sorry for those poor people in the wagons, I really don’t know, and he didn’t shoot us, he just pretended he didn’t see us at all.”