"I remember that day - the night of 21 August, we lived in Jindřišská Street. We slept with the windows open, as it was summer. At night we heard the constant ringing of taxis and various calls. So my man and I went to the window and we saw a taxi driver who got out and called that we had been attacked by the Russians. The whole house was up and indeed the next morning two tanks arrived in Jindřišská. One stood next to Jindřišská Tower and the other on Wenceslas Square. No one was allowed to walk in Jindřišská Street, but people didn't care, they went to the tanks and talked to the soldiers."
"Then came the year 1945, when the Germans were retreating and the Russians came to the Czech Republic, to Czechoslovakia at that time. They came to us and I know that we listened to the radio and the reporter said that the Old Town Hall was burning and that the Russians were already on the outskirts of Prague. And the Russians really came to us, everyone welcomed them, cheered, carried drinks because they were on the road for a long time."
"I remember siren sounding at noon. It meant a raid. We experienced the first raid. We were standing by the window and Mom said, 'Look, there are hundreds of planes!' So we looked like this and suddenly we saw... a terrible rumble and there were bubbles coming from those planes, and they were just dropping the bombs. Well, we didn't know that. Mom said, "Children, you'd better get out of that window." And before she could finish her talk, I woke up in the bathroom with my head bleeding and blood running over my face."
Jaroslava Mertlová was born on July 15, 1935. She spent the war years in Prague, where she experienced a bombing in February 1945, during which she was wounded. In May 1945, she welcomed the arrival of the Soviet army with other Praguers. After the communist coup, she did not get into high school because her father ran a business until 1948. She did not complete her studies by distance until several years later. Although she was never a member of the party, in the 1970s she worked as a secretary in the Regional Sports Administration and accompanied important personalities on their visits to Czechoslovakia.
