Johann Vater

„Hitler did it in Russia as well. What had he done? He had so many people executed. Innocent ones. He stole, too. There was a German guy from Sudeten, he couldn’t go back [to Czechoslovakia] and he was a genuine Nazi, a member of the SS, and he would always say: ‘If I could ever come to Czechoslovakia, I would kill many Czechs,’ he would say, ‘because they chased us away.’ Why would he say that? The Czechs had to defend themselves, on one hand. Why were they so cruel as to expel the Sudeten Germans? We don’t know. That they kicked people out of their homes this way. That they became this cruel! Despite having sat at home all war long. Nothing bad happened to them and then they behaved so awfully to the soldiers.”

“All the Hitlerjugend, everyone was being prepared for fighting. They always told us there that when they see us in Russia, they will kick our arses when we wouldn’t know what to do. In Hitlerjugend, it was nearly worse than in the actual army. We had to learn how to shoot, we had to learn how to march. But in Windhaag, when we marched… The teacher was a true Nazi. He cursed at us a lot. When one of the boys got out of step, when he marched, he would yell: ‘The Russians will kick your arse one day if you wont be able to march better.’”