Věra Protivová

"He wasn't comfortable with the regime. My husband worked in the forty-eight, 1948 and 1949, in Switzerland in a hotel there because there was the Winter Olympics in St. Moritz. And Czechoslovakia had their representatives there, and also our republic had to give some of their service personnel to have their people there, to have enough service personnel. And because my husband had hotel school in Marianské Lázně and he worked in Prague in the Representation House, it's still called the Representation House, or whatever it's called, the Municipal House it's called now. So he was chosen because he was also linguistically equipped, he knew German and English, so he was delegated there. And when he came back, he started his military service. So he had his contract of employment extended there, because I think he was well listed there, as far as I know, so they extended his contract of employment there until the forty-ninth year. Well, and then he came back and he was back as a spy and as a traitor and I don't know what they were giving all kinds of titles to these people."

"I experienced firsthand with my grandmother when our uncle Jan was evicted from his farm. And unfortunately, his wife was struck by a stroke in her 40s, so she was paralyzed. Well, they evicted them to Neveklov, or Neveklovsko at that time. There was an area there, actually it was a twice evicted, evicted area. When the Germans came, they moved the locals out and made a military area, yeah, for the soldiers, sort of, I don't know if the Wehrmacht, just for the soldiers. And then when the war was over, the Germans were moved out again and it was broken up again, that area, that town or village, so they moved these people in again, and they took everything away from them. And I know it was kind of a pretty pathetic time then. I don't know how I ended up there with my grandmother, my grandmother was such a spirited woman I have to say, I have wonderful memories of her, she told us great stories amongst other things, like she made up quite a few. But she was such a person that she would almost turn up at every event. Whether it was weddings, funerals, or even this one as a bad thing. And I remember it was very sad. That they put six chickens in a sack, and they threw them on the flatbed truck, and when my grandmother said, at least add a duck, they have two kids, two boys. Nothing, it didn't exist, it was just hard, ugly, hard, like it was going on."