"I went to work as usual, and when I got to work, my dad called to say that my mom wasn't feeling well, and if I could come back. By then the Prague transport was somewhat disrupted, so we walked. My friend came with me. We reached Vinohrady where my parents lived, and a doctor came out and ordered my mother to be taken to the hospital. An ambulance arrived and I went with my mother in the ambulance to Vinohrady Hospital. On the way, the Russians shot at us and (the ambulance drivers) couldn't stop swearing. We arrived at the hospital and there was a big commotion. We sat my mother down, she was terribly sick, vomiting blood. While we were waiting for her to be admitted, an ambulance arrived with a young woman whose two legs had been run over by a tank. She was conscious and only called and begged for the impossible: to save her legs. It was a horrible thing."
"It was quite tough to squeeze between the militiamen and policemen and get out of the gathering. They were intercepting people; some people were detained but I don't know what happened to them. I guess it was like my friend; they held him in for a few days and then released him. I also remember one more thing. A policeman said, 'Now, young men, things are getting worse for you, aren't they?' Someone answered, 'Yes, blood was shed.' We heard a few shots coming from the castle, though we never really reached the castle. The protest march was meant to encourage President Beneš not to accept the resignation of the ministers at the time. They signed their resignation thinking that everything would go the democratic way. Which it didn't."
"Then the Vlasov people showed up and said they were going to take over the defence of the whole block, so they drove us out of the houses and evacuated us to Michle where our local friends took us into shelter. Later on, the Vlasov army... though we didn't find out until later... and we also experienced some nice things in Michle. I'm getting a little personal here... I got close to a girl from our house in the shelter, and we kind of lightened things up... the others rooted for us and it was nice. They sent us to buy bread from the Michle bakery, which was not far from where we were staying temporarily. We went shopping while the combat action was still on. I'd have to show you where it was. The houses where we were temporarily staying were in the valley, whereas Pankrác is on a hill. They were still fighting there, and as we were walking through the valley to get the bakery stuff, suddenly I heard this strange whistling noise. It was more like intuition - I grabbed the girl by the hand and pulled her to the other side of the street. What I believe was a mortar hit the very the place where we were walking before."
"We were, you could say, a Masaryk-style family. Our next-door neighbours had German friends who would visit them now and then, and they had two children, Bert and I can't remember his sister's name. Bert was about my age and we used to play. They spoke very good Czech; they were German Social Democrats and more or less pro-Republic. We would play war. By then, Hitler was already on the scene and the boy would spontaneously shout with me, 'Down with the Germans!' Since he was German, he had to enlist, and I met him years later in Počernice where I went and we met by chance. I said, 'Hi Bert!' He said, 'Are you saluting me even though I'm German?' I said, 'Why, yes, we're friends...' He says, 'You see, I'm ashamed of being German. I'm in the army now, but I'm going to get transferred to the Russian front and I hope I don't come back.' And he didn't come back..."
Ladislav Müller was born in Prague on 4 September 1925. He grew up as an only child in a middle-class family. His father was a clerk and his mother stayed at home. Shortly before the war, the family moved from Horní Počernice to Prague’s Pankrác district where they witnessed the dramatic final days of the war. At that time, eighteen-year-old Ladislav helped build barricades, witnessed the arrival of SS troops and soldiers of the Russian Liberation Army, who, after the evacuation of the inhabitants, battled to liberate this part of Prague. Ladislav was repeatedly in direct danger of death. He graduated in 1946 and then began to study at the Czech Technical University. He was sensitive to the post-war transformation of Czechoslovakia and took part in the student march to the Prague Castle in February 1948. He has traumatic memories of 21 August 1968 when his mother died in the Vinohrady Hospital because doctors were unable to operate on her in time due to the large number of the injured. He worked at the Research Institute of Vacuum Technology until retirement, never joining the Communist Party, yet his expertise enabled him to keep a leading position. His friends included prominent dissidents from the Evangelical Church. In the 1980s, he took part in most of the anti-regime proests, including the student march in Albertov in November 1989. He is married and he and his wife have raised three sons. He lives in Prague (2024).
