Jarmila Omesová

"We survived in there. Then my parents started to smell smoke, so my dad slowly opened the door. The door to the basement was in a small hall where there were four other doors. The smoke was coming from the kitchen; it was on fire because the cot caught fire when the Germans threw grenades inide. There were blankets in the cot. It's here in this photograph. The cot was completely shot through, and my parents found 360 bullets in the kitchen cleaning up on the afternoon on 10 May. My mum heard the word 'khorosho' around noon on 10 May and knew it was Russian, so only then my father cautiously peeked out of the cellar to see what was going on. There were Russian cars driving by, and so they came out of the cellar. I've always been a belligerent child, so I took a wooden spoon - the little stick in my hand - I went to get the Germans. I had the doll with me in the cellar, I kept telling her, 'Don't cry, it's going to be okay again.' We survived, thank God. In fact we like to say that day was our second birthday, because if they had found us in that cellar, they probably would have shot us."

"We were in the cellar with my parents and the Germans raided our house. A firebomb dropped and the Germans were firing from above through the house. They thought that someone was firing back at them, so they broke into our flat, broke the windows and doors and everything my dad had in the shop. They also broke all the goods shelves and threw four grenades in. They screamed, 'Where are the Czech dogs?' while we were behind a wooden door in the cellar. Dad and mum had a bed, some water and food and candles ready in there for some time. That's where we survived the worst time from May 9 to 10 in 1945."