Hana Lapková

"The year 1949 came, when Zdeněk Novotný modified and started the unified school and we did political interviews. A committee was appointed, consisting of: a representative of the ČSM - that was the Czechoslovak Socialist Youth Union, then it was someone from the school, some professor and some strangers were there as well. And they asked us such nonsense. They asked me what action committees were. I was 14 years old and I was interested in sports, in racing, not in some... I had no idea. I don't think that was the main reason I was kicked out of high school and told I couldn't continue my studies. And there were seven others with me, who had similarly so called "vyakčněné" parents [those assessed by action committee as unreliable - trans.]. So, we dropped out, seven of us dropped out of school. And we were told that we could either go into production or we could go to a unified school, but a year down, which was terribly humiliating. So, I said: 'I'll go into production.'"

"When I got up in the morning, I could hear the terrible roar of the planes. It was flying all over Prague to Ruzyně. I didn't know what was happening, it didn't occur to me that something like that could happen. It wasn't until the forenoon at work that we found out and it was a terrible disappointment. When we went home, I live in Žižkov, when we went home we went up the tunnel from Karlín to Žižkov and there were already soldiers with tanks standing on Vítkova Street pointing their guns at us, it was terribly unpleasant."

"When the air raid came, it was terrible, I don't wish that on anyone. We were in the cellar and it was Palm Sunday, that's the last Sunday before Easter, I don't know exactly what the date was. Well, but here the bomb fell on the nursery, it got a direct hit, and the other bombs were just in that area in front of the three houses, where the OSN Square is, there were five big craters. It was said that the bombs were meant for that ČKD, but unfortunately none fell there and it fell here in the civilian [area]. But the advantage again was that it fell in loose soil and it only knocked out the windows."

"It wasn't that easy yet, the revolution wasn't easy for us here because the Germans were living in the school, so we were afraid of that. So, we were all in those cellars, we had it adjusted for sleeping. But then the men went to liberate, well, liberate, they went to disarm the Germans in the school here. But two Germans managed to escape on these flat roofs here at the girls' school, I'm talking specifically about the girls' school, and they fired. They had a gun somewhere, which they didn't confess, and they fired into that Špitálská Street. There, on the house number, I think it's number five, the number of the house, in Špitálská, if you go there, there's a plaque, usually there's a wreath, and there's the name Vlastimil Hrdina, he was the father of three children. And they just stuck their heads out of the door with one other gentleman, and he got shot, exactly."