Alena Satynková

“It was wartime, everything was rationed. I had a lovely big doll with an emerald dress and hat tied with a ribbon. Mum washed the dress and the hat, and we then changed it in Zbečno with the farmer Barchánek, who owned the meadow where our cottage was, for a packet of flour. I cried for it so much! I was so terribly sorry for losing it, but those were the times, we needed to eat. A roll was for one square. The tickets were divided into squares for 50 grammes, 100 grammes. It was awful. They were always issued for the whole month, they gave them out at the town hall. And when you used them up, you couldn’t buy anything. No one sold you anything without a ticket because they were required to glue them on big sheets of paper. Mum and I would go to the mills. There were two mills in Družec. We walked all the way from Kladno, from one mill to the other. Mum literally begged for a bit of flour. So we had a packet of flour for my doll!”

“There was a big camp at Ostrovec [now a part of Kladno - transl.]. The Russians had taken up the whole forest. Everyone - Mrs Šímová, Mrs Lukavská, and us children - visited them en masse and peeled their potatoes. They cooked in huge cauldrons. That was the field kitchen that they had with them. They made a fire under the cauldron and threw everything into it. Say, they stuck a horse. They didn’t mess around with anything. They rewarded us with a mess tin full of rice. Mum couldn’t believe it! I brought home a mess tin full of cooked rice with pieces of meat this big in it. In September 1945 they slowly began withdrawing from Ostrovec. Then came 21 August [1968], and they were back there again! They had it mapped out, they knew where to go, exactly. A pine tree stuck out of the forest, one of a kind. In 1945 they had their gate next to it. And right under the pine tree they put a narrow guardhouse. In 1968 it was the same. The gate was there, the guardhouse was there. When you look out from that place, you can see Kladno spread out before you. You have a great view of Poldi factory, Kladno, and so on. It is a very strategic spot. Well, but in 1968 one had a slightly different approach to the matter.”

“We were outsiders a bit because Podprůhon was a worker’s quarter, and you could see the difference also at school. I didn’t really like saying I was from Podprůhon. The main street was full of private businessmen, and we attended the same school as their children. And the differences - be it as it may - were visible. We Podprůhoners stuck together. The groups scrapped with each other, the Podprůhon boys, the boys from Ostrovec, from Bresson, or from Engerth. Usually up on the slag heap. The slag heap is pretty much gone now as well, its flattened up. I don’t go to the slag heap any more, so I don’t exactly know what it looks like now. They began flattening the heap back in forty-five, they made the German prisoners of war do it. The mine shaft Engerth was there, the Germans filled it. Those were the foot soldiers, who always get the worst of everything.”

“As every other morning, I took the morning train. The boom gates were lowered, and tanks were waiting behind them. That was my first taste of 21 August. My husband had a more difficult time because he was in the militia. It wasn’t so simple that he could stamp his foot and say ‘not I!’. It didn’t work like that. He was an officer back on the borders, so when he came to Kladno, he was automatically drafted into the militia. The militia was everywhere, in the mine shafts, in Poldi [Steelworks], etc. My husband took it very badly. I didn’t see him the first three days. People were gathering around Soviet monuments, wanting to knock them down. Monuments to the Red Army soldiers. The militiamen were posted there to stand and guard the monument. And the people spat at them. It was a great disappointment to him, and afterwards I could see that he did not believe in it quite so much.”

“In nineteen-forty-five, on 5 May, I experienced a beautiful moment. My children’s bed was in the corner, partly sticking out in front of the window, and every morning as soon as I woke up, I would jump up and look out of the window at the people walking along the street. On 5 May I woke up, and skippity skip to the window, and there I saw people with tricolours pinned to their coat pockets or hats. I didn’t know it was the tricolour. Mum came into the room, and I asked her: ‘Mummy, what’s that on their hats? It’s lovely.’ For a nine-year-old child it was beautifully colourful. Mum was so moved that tears came to her eyes, and she said: “The war’s over.’”

“Stella lived in Dejvice in a house that was built by the housing cooperative of the ABC Theatre in the 1950s. It was established in 1956 or 1957, and there were a lot of actors in it. The house where Stella lived, was also home - as far as I know - to Haničinec, Jarka Adamová, Kubernátovic, Ivo Niederle, who lives there to this day. Bit by bit they found themselves other flats or bought themselves houses and so on. At the time when I used to visit Stella, you couldn’t see it so much, but Stella always told of how, say during New Year’s Eve, the whole house was alive. All the doors open, and a racket from top to bottom. New Year’s Eve was celebrated from floor to floor, and then back down and up again. Those were big parties. Those were the 1960s. Of course, they were all younger back then. Everything changes, and so it changed there as well. Of the initial group, the only ones left in the house were Stella, Ivo Niederle, and Kubernátovic.”