... and they threw the baby to its grandmother

At the end of April 1945 little Božena witnessed houses being burned down in Prlov, where she was visiting her uncle along with her sister. The village was encircled by the Germans, and with the help of a captured sixteen-year-old partisan, Alois Oškera, they started to identify partisans and their “helpers”. The ones they chose were separated from the others and put in a different room where they tortured them to reveal more names. “... they had that Oškery boy there from Všeminy, he had to point at those he knew and at those he stayed with... The minute he pointed at the Ondrášeks, they took them aside and then threw them into a fire.” Altogether, 23 people died in the fire. “Twenty three were burnt to death. One of them had just recently married into the family, she had a baby eight months old or so – they burnt her to death as well. They threw the baby to its grandmother. So, only the grandmother was left with the baby. Otherwise, all of them from that house, those Ondrášeks, were burnt to death. The young wife and the brothers and the parents – all of them.”