„[Uncle] was a gulag, so they took him and he had to work in a forest for three months for free. But then they let him go home. But otherwise they were establishing kolkhozes. That was the main thing. Those were not so bad in the end, but it should have been a fair play. Not the way they´d just offer them, all mechanised. As soon as you put your land in kolkhoz, you were already slaving and had nothing at all. That was the kolkhoz, the head was making decisions and all was sacred. Just like in the army. What the lieutenant said, was untouchable. No matter whether he thought right or wrong, he just had the authority.“
„We didn’t count them, as who fell amongst us, so no one cared if they were wounded or dear. Some guy called Král got shot in his leg and I wanted to bandage the wound and the commander shouted at me: ‚Just move on forward, leave him.‘ So I did. I haven’t got a clue, how he ended up. I´ve never seen him again. We cared about the front only, what was happening at the back, no one could watch at night nor during the day.“
„A boy with large shoulders. He also kicked the bucket there, as he and a driver sat right at the back wheels as the front was upside down. He [a German soldier – editor´s note], as he shot it just a few metres away from me, so Lipavský got it right in the chest and was dead in no time.“
„To buy something, clothes or other stuff, a man had to go to the town there. The closest town to us was Ostrožec, a small Jewish town, so there you could buy better stuff. For anything better or bigger than they offered, we had to go to Lucka. It was twenty-one kilometers far to go. There were many things to get. But as I said, we started with no electricity, no gas nor canalization, nothing. We started just with a bare field.“
„The Germans were returning, but we were attacking them. So we didn’t see them. They were masked and in hiding, they´d let us come close. When we did, it all began. We had guns, AVT-10 [but most army had AVT-40 – editor´s note], and that was still better than a submachine gun or a rifle. That is just long and gets in a way and is too visible. The submachine gun is short, small, easy to leave. Done. It was just poor.“
Václav Žitný, a retired second lieutenant, was born on 24 December, 1925 in a village of Ledochovka in Volyn, a former Poland. Dad and mum worked at a farm and the witness had several siblings. He went to elementary school and experienced a Soviet and Nazi occupation during his childhood. On 12 April, 1944 he joined an establishing 1st Czechoslovak Army Troops in Rovno. He served in the 1st brigade of the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd company as a submachine gunner and survived the Karpaty-Dukla operation and a liberation fights in the territory of Slovakia. At the end of war he was assigned to artillery and worked the 76 mm canons. In Prague he experienced a defile and following demobilisation on 2nd April, 1945 he returned to Volyn, as his dad died in 1941 and only mum and sister remained to take care of the farm. Yet in 1947 he re-emigrated to Czechoslovakia and settled down in Soběsuky near Žatec, where he worked as a private agriculturist. Later he moved to Žatec, built a house and got a job in a hops factory. Václav Žitný passed away on July, the 6th, 2017.
