Alena Ševčíková

“My sister was two years old, so we put her into the pram and tucked her in with duvets. Dad took some important things he needed with him on the bike, Mum also had a cart with some things. I pushed my sister in the pram. We couldn’t take the path by the river because there was a crater there from the previous night’s bombing, so we went down the main road. There were lots of armed soldiers, infantry, and waggoners with horses around the school, the pub, and the bridge. A real front. We passed through that. I know it gave me a shock, so much so that we didn’t even reach the upper end of the village. We stopped by some friends of ours to let me get a bit of rest, because it was a terrifying experience for me. There were also German soldiers at my grandparent’s place, at that upper end. I know that they ordered Nanny to make some dough for filled buns. She made it, but then they received the order to leave immediately, so they put the dough into some sacks and rushed off towards Příbor.”

“When I was ten, my cousin and I spent the holidays at my Nanny’s. It was 1944, and there were bombs falling on Stará Ves back then. We children always watched the groups of planes as they flew overhead. They looked like little silver stars. We liked it, we admired them. Unfortunately, in that August of 1944, the squadrons of planes dropped some of the bombs on us in Stará Ves. I saw with my own eyes how the bombs fell. We were standing by the barn next to Nanny’s cottage, looking at the planes, and suddenly there was an terrible din, smoke and fire. My uncle took me into the cellar, we could hear moaning in the vicinity because it had hit some of the houses. Several people died there. Apparently, it was an air raid on Ostrava. It was said that the pilots needed to lighten their load, so they dropped bombs on to the fields, but they also fell on houses.”