Ing. Stanislav Burda

"I know that once Brezhnev drove through Česká Lípa, we had to go instead of school, but again it was an afternoon class, we had to stand in a line and the convoy of cars drove past. And somebody noticed that Brezhnev was sleeping there. That was perhaps the only thing that was obligatory. We used to go, in those days people were still working on Saturdays, so we used to go on Saturdays for voluntary jobs. And I remember that in the spring we were cleansing, cleaning, raking leaves, broken branches in some park like that. And two months later, bulldozers came and started to destroy the park. They were building a road. So, I vowed I would never go on a job like that again."

"Then I was awakened in the night by a noise and I crawled out of my tent. There was a guy already standing there, too, and we were wondering what the hell the planes were doing. There were planes from the east, those military planes, flying right over the Vrátná dolina. But we didn't know that, it was dark, we only heard it. And we thought maybe the war had started or something. And suddenly a lady came out of the tent, crying and saying: 'The war has started, the Russians have invaded us.' So, we stared and listened to a transistor radio.”