Naděžda Brůhová

"There was a Russian officer and his son inadvertently defected and became a captive. What happened was that the son then returned and the officer shot him to death as a traitor. He shot his own son. That was something. He just did it in order to demonstrate that he would shoot even his own son for having been taken prisoner. He showed to all of us that this would happen to anyone who would come back."

"We were ordered to go, and our observation post was within one-kilometre range. We had to maintain the connection, but bomb were flying all around us and broke our lines, and we lost our connection. But we knew that there was our friend within one kilometer, and that he was left there without connection. We thus had to go there. We used those wooden army machines and telephone wires. If we had a signaler, they would go there themselves, and we would just be on duty. But if there was nobody else, we would go – two girls – and we had to establish connection. You get there, there are many lines, you pick up the connection... there were the Germans, and there were the Russians, too, and we had to keep searching for a long time before we established our own connection. All this with shells flying over your head."

"My sister lived in a house opposite to mine. A barn was on fire there. My mom was just in my place and she went there to look. She went, obviously, because it was where my sister lived and this Synková then turned her in. Mrs. Synková was present whenever there was a fire. She would always try to get hold of some poultry or fowl. But then she betrayed herself. My mom was detained at the police station for two days, and we were coming to see her. Later, they prepared a trap for Synková and she got caught herself. She was an old woman. She went there with a pannier on her back, and it caught fire. They caught her there and imprisoned her. For ten years."

"What often happened in Slovakia was that we came to a village and the Germans ran away and left the houses all tidied up and food served in the kitchen. But we were not allowed to touch anything, because it might have been poisoned. Some people in Slovakia treated us terribly, at least us girls. When we were really desperate, we were even capable of stealing. But only food. I am not ashamed of that. One of us would always start talking to them... They used those wooden chests for storing bread. We would take only bread, nothing else. One girl, Olina, would always tell me: ´You didn’t steal, you were a saint. You just went to entertain people.´ They were at home, and they had these long chests in the hallway where they stored their bread."