Eliška Gazdová

"[I knew that dad would arrive on Wednesday] on the fast train from Prague, which then took seven hours, and I arranged it with the master if I could leave two hours early from teaching. We were already sewing there, so I made up the two hours, and when I left I said to the master, 'My dad is coming.' I turned around, ran to the train, bought a ticket to Ramzová and got off there. I waited for the express train, I got on, it came back, I think in February or so. It was winter, the skiers were there, and a full train, two cars, and now I got on the side of the train and I was going through it. These were compartments, I didn't see him anywhere. People: 'There's nowhere to sit, what are you pushing.' I walked into the other car and it was without a compartment and I saw him standing in the aisle, he couldn't sit anymore, so he was standing in the aisle and I recognized him right away because my dad was always the same whereas I was different. Seven years or 14 years, that's a big difference. So I started smiling at him, and I walked up to him, and he was looking at me and wondering what it was. And I walked up to him and I said, 'Dad.' And that's when he realized who I was, and we hugged. So I greeted him like that, nobody knew about it, I didn't even tell my mom that he was ahead of me like that. There were some women sitting there going, 'That's love, that's love.' If they had any idea we hadn't seen each other in seven years."

"Thanks to the fact that we were in Pálkovice, my dad took courage and said to himself, I didn't do anything, why should I go to jail. And he was still making arrangements with one of those Gypsies, a single guy fifteen years younger, and together they went to the border. They got somewhere, I don't know exactly, got off and then walked into the woods. And one day they were walking, and suddenly they see two border guards with a dog facing each other. So they stay there and they say, well, that's it. They stayed standing, they didn't run, they didn't move, they sent the dog, the dog sniffed them, they called the dog back, they turned around and walked away, the border guards. So they kept on going, looking to see where the border was. The next day, they hear the border guards coming over there again, so they hid behind a bush somewhere, and now they hear the border guard say, 'Look, it's those two,' and they went on. So the second time they let them go like that. They thank the boys if they're alive. And so then they hit the wires, so with the suitcase one of them picked it up, held it up, they went under, and that's how they got to West Germany, and then they were in the camp where these refugees were being rounded up."