Božena Škrabalová

* 1934

  • "It was between Čachnov and Pusta Kamenice in the evening of May when people are attending the May devotion. So a lot of children and people from Čachnov were in that church in Kamenice. We heard a huge explosion. So we all ran out of the church and watched what was happening. And then the bullets started flying around our heads. And we saw black smoke at the grove. So we hurried to the church. "It was the derailed train. " Yes, Germans were shooting, because they were fanaticised by Hitlerjugend, and they started to violently shoot into the village. They shot Mr Jan Mare,s who was having his dinner, at his house. That was their first victim. And then we hid in that church and stayed there until the evening, until darkness, when my sister (risking her life) - the older sister - came for me through the arch through the village of Ruda. She made such an arch and came to that church for us children. But the Germans kept going. They caught all the people returning from that church, in fact not only people returning from the church. They caught a young man who was returning from a girl and had a bicycle. They saw that he was going from somewhere, so they shot the 18-year-old Jaroslav Dostál. My classmate, fourteen-year-old Jiří Pospíšil, his uncle Václav Hvězda, 50, were shot there. And then there appeared a partisan, who had been hidden by the people of Františkovy for several years, somewhere in a barn under the planks. And he wanted revenge, so he came there for death. Nazis tortured and hanged him. "

  • "In Čachnov during the war, it was known that the retreating front we were following would follow the Františka state road. And it was within range, downhill. So all the people in the village dug bunkers in the forest. We also had our bunker, where we would hide from the retreating front. It didn't happen, we didn't need a bunker. But we saw this - it was the Americans or the Russians, we didn't see what kind of planes it was, and we saw how the retreating army was decimated. They started bombing them. And we saw the horses, wagons, tanks from that road coming down the hill as it exploded. We had it as a theatre, we saw it completely. But we were ready to escape to the forest. Fortunately, it turned out that they bombed it and flew there. But a Czech man is a Czech man. After this incident, people run there and began to gather supplies. The youth started collecting weapons and ammunition, and we played with it in the woods by pulling bullets at the patrons and firing it in the woods. My brother had grenades, revolvers. I don't know where it went then. But because it all lay there, people gathered food, spices, alcohol there, they just went there like a fair. "

  • "Then, of course, the Russians came, they didn't always behave the way they said. They thought they were the winners and they are allowed to do everything. Not that I condemned it, they were after terrible experiences, weren't they? They were looking for watches, that was something for them. They chased the girls [to rape them], which was worse. They entered my uncle's house by the forest. And one such drunk soldier climbed into the house and wanted to take something. But he was probably looking for a watch. And my uncle caught him there, he came home unexpectedly. The Russian beat him up so badly, he beat him terribly that he was completely covered in bruises, bluish-black. And when it was reported, the soldier was shot. No court. Because he didn't behave the way he should. "

  • "We sat in the evening and someone was knocking on the window. So the parents went to open and - the partisans. And now the dilemma. Aren't they provocateurs? Should we give them the bread? What if it's just a costume? It was a terrible hesitation, but of course the bread was given to them, and when we knew they had settled there, there was a forest hut in the woods on the road to Karlštejn (there is such a chateau) where there was hay for the game. The partisans slept there. Dad and neighbours (when they already knew where they were) brought them food there at night. "

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    Polička, 04.07.2019

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When your life is marked by fear, you carry it with you to the grave

Photograph of a witness and her friend from 1940 in Čachnov.
Photograph of a witness and her friend from 1940 in Čachnov.
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Božena Škrabalová, née Kynclová, was born on September 5, 1934 in the village of Čachnov in the Vysočina region. The father was a labourer and the mother earned a living through various jobs - from servicing to fishing net making. Božena was the last of five children, and at the time of her birth the family was struggling with the effects of the economic crisis and her life was affected by extreme poverty. The witness‘s greatest trauma was caused by an experience at the end of the war, when on May 5, 1945, a guerrilla operation took place near Čachnov. The partisans detonated ammunition as the train passed with the German crew. The retaliation came immediately and claimed many innocent lives, which Božena witnessed. As a result of this experience, her whole life was marked by fear. After completing primary education, due to the family‘s financial situation, the young girl had to give up any aspirations for further education. She joined the Hedva textile factory in Polička as a worker. After meeting her future husband, she moved to Polička. She raised two children and in 1964 joined a bookstore. She and her husband stopped participating in public life after 1968 when the witness‘s husband resigned from the Communist Party in response to the occupation of the country by Warsaw Pact troops. In order for their children to study, their parents had to use their contacts. In the years 1977–1978, Božena studied distance learning at the library school in Luhačovice. The witness welcomed the Velvet Revolution, took part in a demonstration in Polička Square, but no longer publicly engaged in any way.