CZ3 Liberation

Narrators: Some villagers in Heike`s village Reporter: Heike Knapova

It happened at the beginning of May in the village called Zeleč. In the last days of April the war front reached our area. German soldiers moving back to Germany passed our village. We were waiting for the Russians, because they had already liberated the cities of Ostrava and Zlin. They stopped moving on because of the May holiday.

My mother, my brothers and sisters and me, we hid in the cellar under the cowshed of an estate. On May 2, the Russians came to us into the hiding place. We had a nice impression of them. We greeted them cheerfully. They gave us chocolate. They told us, “Don’t be too happy. Behind us there are the troops of General Malinowski.“

Two German soldiers had decided to surrender to the Russians, so they hid in a cellar. A communist from our village told that to the Russians. So the Russian soldiers went to the cellar, pulled them out and shot them. Their bodies were lying in the estate under the chestnut tree for four days. Who had buried them I don’t remember. Later they wanted to shoot us, because they thought we had hid the soldiers. But we went to a captain with whom we could negotiate. Finally he believed us that we had not helped them.

In this spring it was raining a lot. The streets were full of mud all over. I had only low shoes. A Russian soldier gave me a pair of boot which he probably had robbed from the shoe factory Bata in Zlin.