Hana Lamková

"And it was a beautiful day, the sun was shining. I left my coat with them in the apartment and we went to play on the meadow next to the house. We were having fun there. We were chasing each other and so on. Then their dad, the gardener came and said, 'Lunch is on the table.' I knew I had to go home. Věra and her little brother went too. Because it was warm, I had my coat removed and stored in their apartment. I went with them to their house to get that coat. Then their dad started shouting - because planes could already be heard and some detonations were beginning to be heard. Their dad called, 'They're dropping bombs!' I looked at the sky that he was looking at and saw something falling from those planes. It was really obvious that something was falling from it. That's when we came. They ran into that house and I ran with them. The door to their apartment was open. I ran for the coat and saw that no one was there. They ran to the shelter, but I didn't know that. So, I took the coat and suddenly, the bombs started falling all around. I squeezed myself between the closet and the wall into such a narrow gap as when a cat in danger climbs into the narrowest hole. Such an instinct. I remember praying, though normally my religious feelings were not very intense, but such a moment will make you. The window was blown up, all the glass - it was in the kitchen. They had a kitchen, a room, and through the kitchen we went to that room. I was squeezed beside the closet in the kitchen. I was lucky that the glass from the windows didn't hurt me. They had such a kitchen table in front of that window and there were four chairs and, on the table, there were plates where they had potato dumplings with cabbage. It was full of shards and dirt, because as the bombs fell in the park, rubble and soil flew everywhere, and it all flew through the window. And there was a curtain in the middle of the window that covered the middle part of the window. Then there was a terrifying silence. This took about five or six minutes. Then there was total, complete silence. And only the wind was blowing. And the rings as they were on the curtain rod were blowing there. Everything was devastated. And then the dad of my friend was already looking for me, because they didn't know where I was. They said to themselves, 'Where is she? She must have run home.' He came to the apartment, I climbed out from behind the closet and he took me to the shelter. It wasn't a cellar at all, it was at the level of their apartment. At the back was a laundry room that served as a shelter. If the bomb fell on the house, it wouldn't matter if they were home or in that shelter. It's just that there were no windows. So maybe they wouldn't get injured by the glass. Otherwise it was useless. There were their family and people from other apartments in the house, about four or five people. I remember there was a young lady, about seventeen or eighteen years old, who had a nervous shock.”