Jan Opletal

"The members of the People's Militias ran up with readied submachine guns and at that moment I had clearly determined - here is where the fun ends. And so on the left side, where the airlines were, I went hugging the wall, how I could remember it from those war films, around the displays and I always fell into an entrance. And this is how I went all the way behind the corner of that house on the left side of the Revoluční street, the corner with Dlouhá. In front of me about three people went, who were doing this, and I had the luck to be walking behind them, because suddenly one of the members of the police jumped up and from a distance of maybe five or ten centimetres he shot tear gas into the eyes of one of the two men in front of me. He immediately went down on the ground, the other two were also attacked, and so, I have to say, when we were going against those loaded submachine guns - probably loaded, I don't know - against those militiamen, against that line of men, I managed to go and later I got home, to Hanspaulka."

"The commander of Prostějov, even through cruel torture, never betrayed my father. And so thanks to that my father missed the arrest of Obrana národa, because there wasn't a record of him anywhere. He later worked in Vyškov at the district public office and they were responsible for the distribution of food cards. They cheated the food cards and gave the cheated food cards out to colleagues, soldiers, and other arrested people. Simply a big problem, because of course there were controls done and people counted, how many cards were where in regular controls. But they did it for the reason that, they knew, that when it was being written on a calculator, which was mechanical, that with the press of a certain key there would be a certain amount added to the sum total, but it wouldn't be printed on the receipt. And so they would then, when they were doing the control after and checking off each number, then of course everything added up, but in addition to that the sum would be increased by precisely that amount for bread, for butter, for all those foodstuffs. And so they cheated it that way for about three years, or two years, I don't know, they cheated the food cards and gave them out to the families of those who were arrested."