Josef Zawadský

"It's a bit of a sad memory, but when we were running from that cellar, one German soldier didn't manage to escape before the front. He said, 'I have two little boys like that at home too.' When we came back, we saw him under our big lime tree. He was shot dead. After the war, when they were burying the soldiers where they died, he was buried under that lime tree. We used to go there as children to put there flowers for him. But that didn't last long. About half a year later, the soldiers who had fallen on the territory of Dolní Benešov were exhumed and taken to the cemetery."

"Mum just had time to let the cow off the chain. The cow ran after us, but everything was on fire around us. The neighbour´s [house] behind us was also on fire. Everything was in a blaze. I remember the bullets whistling and we were running to the chateau. We survived three nights there before the front passed. Then we were going back. Of course, when the soldiers were running, they were taking everything. So it happened that my mother didn't have a bedroom. Everything was scattered in the trenches to make it easier for the soldiers to get to the other side. It also happened that when we came back, my mother found only bones left from the cow."