Josef Kaše

"There was one machine I must tell you about, but it did not come from the West, but from the Soviet Union - a press machine for cutting round plates up to a thickness of about five millimetres. It was at least 40 centimetres in diameter - a big, heavy press that shook the whole building when it cut the sheet metal. And because there was a regulation that if Western machines came in, or even those from Russia, they had to do a so-called attestation to see if it met the safety regulations according to our conditions. And the press came in, and there were no security features at all. Presses are terribly dangerous machines because you must put your hands in there. And when it came in, the inspector banned it. And it meant trouble that a Soviet machine came in, and they wouldn't let it run. There was one guy like that, he was the foreman, he only had one leg, the other one was wooden, and he was a big party liner. We went to fix it, and he wouldn't let us do it, saying that it was a Soviet machine and he wouldn't let us work on it. So he wouldn't let us do it, but in the end, we had to do it anyway. And he went and complained to the Party Chairman and said we were going to kneel and beg, that he wanted to save a Soviet machine. He went to complain, but we didn't have to go anywhere."

"Somehow, they suddenly appeared there. You know, I was very young. And we used to go to them for chocolate and chewing gum. They stayed in the brush factory. They stayed there, and they even had an airfield in the meadow. And there, as they were staying there and cooking, we would come to them as kids and: gum, chocolate."