Hana Bébrová

"The Russians came, the Soviet army, they surrounded the dormitory with tanks and wanted us to leave, that they would take it. But we were lucky to have a boy studying there with us whose dad was a cultural attaché at the embassy in Prague, and he arranged for everything to be withdrawn. So they took something else..."

"They took my father to Votice for questioning, told him they were going to arrest him and that he would never come back in his life, that they were going to have him taken away like the others, but the prosecutor did not give them permission to take him into custody. My dad came back, but since then... searches, whatever they liked, they took everything away, we... my dad taught us that when we went to school, that we couldn't walk on the countryside when there were cars or roads... walked a mile and a half, that we had to always walk in the middle so we'd have time to run away, and those gentlemen in those long leather coats and those hats chased us, they were happy about it, when we little kids in the first second grade were afraid of them, and they stayed with us till then. Dad was dying, and they were, under the window sitting by the gutter to see what was going on. I had a nervous breakdown..."