Ludmila Kňourková

“Back then my father used to say: ‚Oh well that is all right. Now you just stay home. You are supposed to leave for England in February, so no need to seek a job for yourself.‘ But meanwhile the situation between the communist party took place. It was in February 1948 and it became clear that I will never make it. Everything had to be cancelled; no one could travel anywhere. While reading the papers I discovered an advert posted by a Belgium diplomat, chargé d´affaires, looking for a child carer. I arranged a meeting directly in his villa, where there were three small boys at home with a madam. And she told us they have a single condition. Her husband was to get transferred to Germany and had to leave in June to Frankfurt and they demanded the child carer to leave together with them. And daddy said that was cool. The main thing was for me to get to Germany, and from there I could get to England easily. A couple of days before the departure date (of the diplomat family), the cook said: ‚I got a brother in Karlsbad, and he is a smuggler, so he can help us cross the border.‘ Even mister diplomat visited the Norwegian minister to ask him to let me go with them. But he also denied his request arguing that the republic needs the young people and cannot let them leave, so he can find someone else. Less than a week before the moving my parents called me to say daddy was coming to see me with a cousin´s letter. He managed to get through Slovakia, and planned to go to Austria and so on. And he was already up on the loading van as a hitchhiker and a Yugoslavian man sat there and Peter (the cousin) told him he was escaping over the borders. And the Yugoslavian reported that Peter intended to go further over the borders. And so he got arrested and returned back to Bratislava to get locked up in prison. Hence my parents decided they could not let me go that way, to prevent me getting arrested, so I had to stay here doing nothing.”

“In the Wenceslas square I already experienced it before, when the Germans were killed. Back then it was a terrible hatred although there were many people, who should not have participated in it at all, as their consciousness was burdened too. They were taking German soldiers. Those who kneeled down ended up really fast. But they were hanging them up on lamps at Wenceslas square, they hanged them with them heads down, putting gas into their mouth and burning them. I once saw a dead burned soldier with his mouth open. He was not burning any more, but in his mouth was gas for sure. I witnessed that. They were simply enjoying it. Who knows what kind of people did it; whether partiots or others who had their own offences to take their minds off. Many dead people were everywhere, Czechs and Germans too...“