Berta Růžičková

“The youngest sister of my mother was there. She had a baby in her arms and she had two more boys; she had three children. She was to be deported, too, and the assembly camp was located in the place of the central school in Sokolov. It is the central school, I attended the higher elementary school there. And she was upstairs on the second floor and I was speaking to her from the ground. There were guards, soldiers, in front to the gate. They said something, but I did not understand. They were saying something, and I was not even listening. There were no other people, only I was there, speaking with my aunt. And suddenly the guards came to me and I had to go with him and he led me to the kitchen there and I had to peel potatoes there. About two hours later, I don’t know, I don’t remember anymore how long it took, but it was about two hours, and then they let me go again. I was made to do something because I didn’t obey them. I had to work as a punishment for it. But he knew very well that I did not understand him.”

“When the end of the war came, there were Americans in our place. But at the outskirts of the village and a little bit further, towards Nivy about a hundred or two hundred metres away, I don’t know, but approximately, there were Russians. In this way we happened to be in the American sector. But when we wanted to go visit our relatives before they were deported, because they were not deported until 1946, we needed to have a permission, a document in order to be able to go. But the Americans did not need any permits, the Russians required them.”