Helena Pletichová

"Suddenly, at four or five o'clock in the morning, somebody bangs on the tent and calls out, some lady: 'Wake up, the Russians are in our country, they're in Moravia now.' I said, who is fooling around, what is that, they're drunks from somewhere... Well, because we didn't get out, my husband was a terrible sleeper and I thought it was nonsense. And the lady came back and called again. So, this time we came out, we didn't want to believe it, because all our lives we were told that the Soviet Union was our friend and that they would protect us, and actually I knew from the literature that in the time of the Czech national revival they said 'we are all Slavic nations'. This was perhaps the most terrible thing. Well, so when it hit us, as they say, my husband jumped on his motorbike and went to that town, I always want to say Kadaň, but it's something similar, for petrol and I got out. Now I was sitting there and I started crying and I said: 'Jesus, what is this, there will be war or something...' And now people had their radios on, we could hear it. So, they were saying, as they were already rushing on these roads, that they don't look to the right, to the left, that people have to jump, and that they don't recommend that anybody goes to Prague, and such. I just cried it out and said: 'But I have a son there and what are my parents going to do with him, we have to get there.'"