Irena Sehnalová

“My mother didn’t have Czechoslovakian citizenship yet so we couldn’t visit Poland. Her mother died and she wanted to go to the funeral desperately. It wasn’t too far, just a short distance from the border. She wasn’t allowed to cross. So she had a large wreath made and went to the border and begged the soldiers to at least take the wreath to the funeral. They refused that too. So then she asked her friends who lived in Poland and worked in Czechoslovakia to bring it to the funeral.”

“Bombs were flying and shots were being fired so we were hiding in the basement. Our neighbours were there too and suddenly someone banged on the door and said to open up in Russian. My grandfather went up the concrete stair and opened the door. The Russian asked him if he was German and shot him in the head. Grandfather fell down and my mother, who was the oldest one there since all her brothers were fighting in the war, ran upstairs and saw her father bleeding there. She grabbed him and wanted to drag him downstairs. Then she saw that the Russian was putting more bullets into his revolver and that he would shoot her too so she left her father there and jumped down to the basement over ten stairs. The soldier didn’t follow her there and threw a tear gas grenade down at us. It started smoking and mother told us all that we needed to get out otherwise we would be poisoned. They put me in the small basement first because they assumed that they wouldn’t shoot a child. They had no idea if someone else was there and when they saw me standing there calmly they all climbed out.”