Albína Charvátová

"And now they came: 'The war is over, there is peace!' And we went to the square. And there were the students, secondary school students. And they were throwing pictures out of the town hall, I thought they were some kind of saints, Hitler and that. And then they started playing the national anthem. And suddenly there were Germans on all sides, machine guns, and the only space that was clear was the street by the tower. That's what I experienced. Now these people, there was a gentleman, a grey-haired man fell down, they were trampling on him, it was all running into it. But they said that the commander had put a ban on shooting, otherwise it... it was no longer worth it."

"Come on, nothing was happening. And when there was an air raid, we took turns, there was always somebody who was banging one of those - if you saw it in the old film - they'd bang on it, instead of like they're ringing now, so they'd bang on it, even to signal the break. So we'd go out, to the shelter, but we weren't in the shelter, it used to be a beautiful blue sky, the bombers like that, we used to watch them. So we were quite glad to get away [from school]."