Miloslav Kudrnáč

"In 1948, at the instigation of the Communists, works councils began to form in enterprises under national administration, and to please them, they criticized the existing managers of the enterprises. My father was also criticised for using his official motorcycle for private purposes. He had a Zetka motorbike, which he used to take care of business, to negotiate contracts with suppliers for posters in Liberec and in the outskirts of Frýdlant. He used to go round his 'regulars'. Once or twice we went out, he took me on a tandem and we went to Doksy. Dad had to hear all this at a meeting where he was invited and told that he also had to quit central heating because the factory shared a boiler with the flat. It heated both the flat and the print shop. Understandably, because it was one owner, why would he do two boilers, right? My father had a nervous breakdown, so he was taken to some institution where he was treated, and my mother and the children moved to my brother in Liberec, because we couldn't stay in that apartment."

"I remember we used to go to the basement during raids. Once it happened that the Germans had a military train at the Neratovice station, and when the American pilots flew at ten thousand metres, they were just little silver dots, but beautiful. It was a bomber formation, fighter planes were flying around, and the Germans couldn't think of anything else to do but to fire the anti-aircraft guns they had on the cars against the planes, which resulted in a few bombs being dropped on Neratovice. One even fell about ten metres from the school, I remember the crater. That was the greatest experience of the whole war. I remember that when it started to explode, my sister, who was born in 1942, was playing outside in the sand, only everyone ran to the basement and she was left alone. So I ran and got her and carried her down to the basement. I was terribly worried about her, I remember that. We were terrified of the bomb explosions."