Žofie Pekařová

“Those of us who remained weren’t allowed to stay in the village, and so we were outside in the dugouts. Then we came back again and endured the rest of it here in the cellar. The front was here three weeks, and we survived it by staying in the cellar. I remember the shooting was always from about six in the morning to about two in the afternoon. We could come out in the evening, it was calm then. The front moved to and fro on Roman Legions Hill. One day the Germans had it, the other the Russians, and so it was to and fro. Nová Ves and Vlasatice here were being shot at, it didn’t go any further. Troskotovice weren’t damaged so much, by then the Germans were retreating and the Russians were following. But the village here was broken up so much because of the shooting. There were air strikes here too, the village was broken up a lot by the bombs as well.”

“Our grandfather, he came from Rožínky, he spoke Czech, but he also spoke German with us. Grandma was from Pohořelice, so she was already Czecho-German, it was already mixed there, her parents were already mixed. Pohořelice were kind of both ways back then. Say our dad used to say: ‘We went to a German school and spoke Czech.’ It was normal in those days, it wasn’t until in thirty-eight that it somehow crystallised and the troubles between nationalities began. But before that it was normal here. There weren’t even any borders here back under the monarchy, so the nationalities mixed and no one found it strange at all.”