Alena Hudcová

"I once asked, 'Teacher,' I was not able to learn to call a comrade, so I say, 'Teacher, please, can you tell me the difference between socialism and communism?' And he says to me, I remember it like now: 'You know, under socialism we have to make money first to put those goods in those shops there. But under communism you come, you want a piece of salami or butter or bread, so you take it off the shelf and go, you don't have to buy it. I was amazed. And then I come home and say, 'I cannot wait for communism is, so we can take everything.' And my dad said, 'Please, who told you that?' I say, 'Well, teacher Kasparec.' this will not be true in life. But you can't say your dad told you this. Dad would be arrested and you wouldn't even have a bread. You couldn't buy it.'

"When Stalin died, first Stalin and then Gottwald, I, on my own initiative, stuck white paper on the wall and newspaper clippings. For example, Stalin in a coffin, a parade waving to the crowd, and things like that. So, I glued it there. And my dad came, he still worked in that Morager and he worked for example in Hrušovany near Brno. So, he went at six in the morning and came at eight in the evening. He comes and sees in the hall: Stalin everywhere. And he said, 'What's that supposed to mean?' He came and I said, 'Well, Dad, when Stalin died and he set us free.' And he: 'Immediately, get rid of, don't start it here like that! Get rid of it! 'And I say,' Well, he died, Gottwald too.' - 'It doesn't matter, one is bigger bastard than another. This is not going to be here! "So, I had to pack it very unhappy."

"As the bombing began, it was dangerous to live in the apartment, so my dad made such a room out of a cellar. We have a stony foundation, he covered it with stones and we were there in that cellar. There was my mother's brother with his wife, my mother's mother, my father and my mother, me and my brother. But you know, the cellar has a humid climate, so mom - it was nice, the sun was shining, I can see it perfectly, as if I had experienced it yesterday - so my mom took our baby's duvet, she put it on a balcony, she shook it and my uncle, her brother, he was lying in a linen couch and reading a newspaper. I was on the balcony, bouncing, looking at the sky and I saw a plane. And I say, 'Mom, look, that plane has a little fire.' she looked and she said to her brother, his name was Václav, so she says to him: "You, Vaso, the plane is really burning!" And he looked up from the newspaper, looked up and said: 'It´s not burning, they are shooting at us.‘ So my mother grabbed a featherbed, my uncle grabbed me like a pint of bread, and we ran down the stairs, ran down the lower corridor - and a bang. They were shooting, they shoot through the railing, the door to the balcony, broke through the railing, it bounced off the wall into the second railing, there was a blanket over it. So, my mom said it was full of feathers everywhere. But nothing happened to us."