Karel Bečvář

„At around three o´clock in the afternoon a Russian soldier woke me up, who came to us. He had a machinegun, the one with a little drum. And told us he´s searching for Germans and was really thorough opening all the drawers of the night stand. Back then we didn’t know that it was really cool for them to find a watch. Then we saw some who had that many watches… Their behaviour was, I don’t want to say evil; they were people who went through a terrible hell. Surely they were different to us, but sometimes they were quite primitive, some of them. For example I met about thirty people marching together and they all had an umbrella and marched with it. Probably not to get wet by the rain or they saw it the first time in their life I don’t know. Or that happened at our home and she was a soldier. She washed herself in the toilet, in the basket and said, how silly it is done, that the water is flowing down for such a short time. I am not laughing at her, she just came from a certain environment and had it in herself. Today it is not true as the progress goes on.“

„But then we laughing at it as much as we could, we were young and silly, somehow superior to ourselves, so we always had a laugh. You probably wish to hear something quite funny. So a boy ran from a lager in Pardubice – for that you got a prosecutor. In a few days he came back, holding his mum´s cake wrapped in a newspaper in his hands and our chief interrogated him: ,You climbed over the fence!‘ And he replied: ,Comrade, I did, but my soul went past the gatehouse.‘ Or it happened in Tábor. It happened to a boy from Prague, a very tall one from a high school and he bumped into a police woman. And didn’t salute her. And she said: ,They didn’t teach you to salute in the army?‘ And he replied: ,Indeed they did, I don’t understand military barches‘ – ,I am a younger constable.‘ – ,And I am an old trouper.‘ And just left.“