Marie Komůrková

"There was a knock on the window in Pávov. It was already dark and mom said, 'Oh my gosh, who's coming to us? Who's knocking?' We didn't even know Daddy was coming back. She opened the window, and Daddy was back from jail. You see, we were older by then; I was ten or eleven, and the last time I'd seen Daddy was when I was a little girl in my mom's arms. All of a sudden here comes a man who we didn't even know. So, Dad came back to Pávov, and it was a small apartment, just 1+1, and that's where we lived."

"Since they believed that we got it all as payments from those people, the state confiscated everything and mommy had to move out. So we moved with three kids to Smrčná to daddy's parents, but three of his siblings were still living in that house left behind by the Germans. One of them, Eda, was still single, and so we lived there. It was very bad to be there. They blamed Mummy for talking Daddy into doing those things... that's how it happened, so we lived there."

"Suddenly it happened that he took one person across the border. After that he was getting many requests from influential people in Prague. Daddy was just 'small potatoes', and then one day they came for him. It was in the morning, I remember. I was a little girl, maybe less than three years old. Suddenly somebody rang the bell and these men in uniforms came in. He was shaving and wasn't even allowed to finish. They picked him up and took him away and we never saw him again. And it on. My mother used to take all the money she had to Prague. In Mariánské Lázně there were these cronies who needed a guide across the border. So Daddy was sentenced to ten years, so we grew up with just Mommy."