Hana Lančíková

"One day, it was sometime in January 1945, when I was a schoolgirl, my brother told me that we would go to the stationery shop, and the stationery shop told me that we would go to the train station, that there were trains from the concentration camp. I don't know where he found out. And indeed, when we arrived at the station, there was a train going through, and there were people standing - in those open carriages - standing there, white-faced, in striped clothes. I remember being absolutely shaken by it, and I couldn't get over it at all as a child. And I remember to this day that every time I came to Přerov and looked at the floor, the floor of the station, I was reminded of that moment."

"My father had a shelter built in the garden, so the students came to us. There was always a raid - and then it was called off. And one day they came again: a boy called Chaloupka and another one - saying that it was not safe with us, and they ran away to the Žebračka. And it happened that there was only one air raid in Přerov, when they wanted to bomb Meopta, and they hit the hospital, in Žebračka, and that boy, that Chaloupka, died there. He was hit by shrapnel. And that was terrible for me. Such a terrible event. And then I fell into this habit of always making little tombs of Chaloupka in the sandpit. And I spent an awful lot of time doing that. Then I made bird cemeteries. That was a very indirect hit."