Milena Hercíková

“I remember that this was where my dad had gone on that day, April 24, when my mum had said that we could go and play outside. All the children were out in the streets. We were watching the convoys of army vehicles and those Russian and German soldiers moving along the road to Žatčany. And out of the blue, a plan was shot down which had first dropped a bomb. There was a group of children but only my brother was killed, the top of his head was cut off by a shrapnel, and I got injured by it. Dad was on the way to gran’s to let her know that we were all alive and well, and before he knew it, this Újezd disaster had occurred. As he was walking back, people were already telling him that a tragedy had taken place in our family. He was rushing back, out of his mind with worry, but my mum was no longer there. Mum saw me staggering from where it had hit, she saw me coming nearer, and I remember I could not see. I remember nothing after this, only what my mum told me: a neighbour helped her carry me to a military hospital with Russian doctors, where they had taken many soldiers injured and killed by the bomb. Mum was begging them to help me, but the wound was so large, and the impact had been so severe, that the arm was hanging limp. It was actually being held together only by the fabric of the dress. Some old doctor told her she needed to leave, that they couldn’t treat me. They had to see to the soldiers first. Mum was begging them until a young doctor agreed to do it. He said it’s death, or amputation. So, they amputated my arm. There was also a gaping wound under my right breast, showing three ribs. Mum was going crazy, she didn’t know what was up with Jaromír and Jirka, but Dad eventually found her there. Dad had already been at the site of the tragedy, he already knew. Before seeing Mum, he had gone to the site, found Jaromír dead and carried him home.”

“For instance, Miroslav Florian was a writer who chaired the Communist Artists’ Union, but he also wrote a poem beginning with the words, ‘May this country finally have some peace, so as she stops dropping everything’. When I recited it at the university in one meeting – by that point my husband had already lost hist job at the university due to his criticism of the Warsaw Pact armies invasion, so he had to leave the school, and he was jobless for quite a while, until I managed to help him thanks to bumping into an acquaintance at some reciting event, who was able to employ him – so they took it as a kind of manifesto. Florian meant it quite differently, he literally meant, ‘May this country finally have some peace so that communism may flourish’. I don’t know, I knew him personally and he was a good man. So, as I was reciting the poem and I was looking at all the teachers, one of whom had posed as a lifelong family friend, I was looking at him and saying, ‘May this country finally have some peace!’ and I said it with emphasis, so that they could clearly see what was really on my mind. Leave us alone with this ideology that you’re doing and you’re doing it badly!”