CZ2 Russian bombs

Narrator: Heike’s colleague Reporter: Heike Knapova

It happened on a Thursday in April 1939, there was no school. This was the reason why I woke up late, the sun was high already. My friend living next door came and we were planning our day (We were eight years old). But all the plans had to be given up.

Suddenly planes appeared in the sky and there was terrible noise everywhere. We didn’t know what was going on. My granny was scared, she wanted to protect us, and she put us into a corner of the living-room and covered us with her own body.

It was like hell. Through the window we saw falling tiles. Russian war planes had bombed our town (mainly the railway station and the malt factory). We didn’t know that our house had been bombed. That’s why the windows had been broken and the tiles had fallen down. I still remember today how grandmother had been praying. We were lucky that the bomb had only lit our house. The bomb didn’t have enough power to come through the ceiling of the living-room. The roof was on fire.

My friend’s live was saved, but at his home bad things had happened: At the beginning of the bombardment his mother panicked because her son was not at home. She feared for his life. She ran out into the courtyard to look for him. The power of the detonation destroyed her lungs. She was dead immediately.

At home we had no bomb shelter and so I spent the rest of the war in various shelters of my parents’ friends. Some Russian soldiers lived in our bunt-out house.

Some months after the end of the war the malt factory still smouldered and I still remember the smell of it.