Pavel Papazov

"I once went to a house and there was a guy I knew, I know where he even lived, and he said to me, 'Where does this Papazov live here?' I'm Papazov.' He punched me, well, you know? And I knew him by sight." - "And did he justify it?" - "No. He slapped me normally, then he kicked me himself, and I rolled down the stairs like this, like a mezzanine, and walked away. I didn't even say this at home." - "And there were more of that sort of things?" - "Well, you know, it wasn't right in that September, August, but maybe a year or so later. 'You're actually from somewhere, how long have you been here?' And I still have that to this day."

"I was woken up by my grandmother - I was alone in Lišov, my parents were in Prague - so she woke me up with the words that the war had started, which is probably how everyone was woken up at that time. Of course, I didn't understand the war either, so I went to the window and I saw that on the main street, because we were on the main street in Lišov, it was the 5th of May Avenue - but that was the name of all the main streets back then - there were actually tanks, not only tanks, armored cars, trucks, everything. To this day I am surprised that my grandmother agreed to this, I would not have allowed my child or grandchild to do this. I got on my bicycle and rode along the sidewalk, not on the road, I rode right up to this Vávra, as he had this elevation on his house, and there I leaned my bicycle, I went to get him. In the meantime, Strnad, that's the farmer, I couldn't remember, Strnad, my friends, my boys or my friends, came. We just stared, where you see, right, the tanks rolling, for an hour maybe. That's just there in the middle of Lišov, not far from that Vávra's house is that church, but this is the street and this is the T turn, they were going down to Třeboň from the top and there were two benches in that T turn and there was a kind of a pillar and there was a mirror for the T turn when somebody was coming out, and we sat on the benches under the mirror, and we watched it, the stream, if I remember correctly, sort of stopped, and other tanks started coming in, and they were actually turning like this, I don't know, ten metres in front of us. As it turned, and there were houses on the corner and they didn't give a damn, so sometimes somebody would take it and turn it and a piece of that house would tear that corner down like that. And we had these bikes leaning over here, and we'd sit there like this and watch."