Ivana Jeništová

"It was in 1952, two months after their wedding. We were only in Vyškov for a short time, my stepfather had two more friends, they went to a pub and there they joked and said they were going to run away to the West - and the third friend went to turn them in. And then they picked up the two of them. I know that after that we were summoned to the commander, me and my mother, my father was already in prison, he was detained before the trial. We went to the commander's office, there was a big desk and there was something covered with a tarpaulin. The commander said to my mother: 'You know what's under there, don't you?' My mother said no. He lifted up the cell, and there were grenades and all kinds of weapons. He told mom that they wanted to take it all with them. I'd like to see how they'd haul it. Well, they just locked him up, there was a trial and he got eight years. They sent him to Jáchymov, which was completely stupid, but in those days, they arrested people for everything."

"I remember my mother telling me how the uprising was over and those who used to raise their hands went to the streets. The youth, such hulks, and suddenly they were terribly convinced resistance fighters and were burning Germans on the lamps. They took them out of their flats, and there was this withered, dry old man who was led around because he was German. My mother said she was walking down the street and there was a dead German lying there burned, she touched him by her foot and she said she remembered his flesh shaking as he was burned, I don't know how she managed it."

"Then it was August, we were visiting, someone had a birthday. We were living in Rychvald, a village just outside Ostrava, and we were about to go to sleep, and suddenly the friends we came from called us and said: 'There's a terrible noise, some tanks are coming.' And I said: Come on, what are you fooling about, it's nothing.' Before that, my uncle and I were on a motorcycle trip where there was a military exercise and it was making a noise at night. This was so much the same, so I said, I guess it's a drill, don't fuss about it. But by morning they started saying it on the radio, so we were watching and listening. And in the morning the tanks were still going. We went to work, and I just had an appointment that day with my doctor, my gynaecologist, who told me that we were going to have a baby. So, imagine the feeling when the war starts - and he announces that you're going to have your first child."