Oldřiška Šťávová

"People from Plaveč started to help them so much that by morning they found a bag of flour, a bag of beans by the gate, or a bag of potatoes, and that kind of thing. And then our dad started working there right after that week or so. Well, now they were putting it all together there, so they were lighting kerosene lamps, electricity was later. First was water, coal. They used to bring the coal from the people from Plaveč so that they could heat it. There in that one big dining room, which they called a dining room, but it was a hall on the ground floor, so that was the only way to go, it was cold upstairs. Everybody was there, even the nuns. It wasn't good for them to have to sleep there with everybody. That night was so bad, they slept for a couple of hours. And dad started helping them up there a lot."

"I was three years old when the nurses came there. At that time two of them came and stopped at the village square looking for help because they came to a broken castle. Well, they came into the pub and the landlady there nearly chased them out because the robes must have been a fright in the fifties. They begged at least for some food, because soon a car and ambulances came and brought them fifty people. The sisters had a broken lock, broken windows, they had nothing to sleep on in the kitchen, there was no light, the electricity didn't work, so they used kerosene lamps. So they went to the pub to ask the men if someone would come and help them. And I don't know. Dad must have been among them, because they came there, they were preparing something for sleeping. They all slept in one room, so they brought them blankets and pillows that they had picked up at home. The food - eventually the innkeeper came, she said it was dark, but she brought tea on a cart and smoked soup and smoked meat with mashed potatoes. So if she got it from those people, I don't know if they each brought it home. Well, they were happy in the castle."