Partisan shelter in flames

Vlasta Klačanská remembers assisting a group of partisans who were hiding in the forests around the villages where she and her sister lived. The partisans had found shelter in a barn in the forest. “They came back at night and lie down in the barn, as they were very tired” remembers Klačanská, recalling that horrible night. “One of them, Nikola, was very thirsty so he went to drink from a brook.” At that moment, Germans surrounded the barn and set it on fire. The barn quickly burst into flames and the family was forced to jump out. “They wanted to retaliate and shoot back, but were unable to. So the Germans shot them all,” she recalls. Only Nikola managed to escape, taking shelter at the house of Vlasta's sister: “He knew that there he was safe, that it was somewhere he could stay overnight. But that night he had come to us, tearing his hair out and screaming. He then went into hiding in the forests till the end of the war. Such tragic events were common place at that time.”