Hrabě Zdeněk Sternberg

“When they discovered the hiding place of the attackers in Resslova Street in the church of Sts Cyril and Methodius, (my friend Malý) told me: ‘We will go look there.’ We thus went there the day when the battle between the attackers and the SS men who surrounded them took place there. But we were not able to get there, because all the streets were closed by the police, and we thus walked from the back to Morán and from there through small alleys we got directly into Václavská Street, which leads directly to the church. And there was the office of the Association of Builders of the Capital City of Prague there in the first floor. My friend Malý knew the secretary, and he let us in, and we thus stood by the window and watched the entire attack from there. I thus remember when they were pumping the water inside, and all these well-known things about the taking of the church.”

“I took part in it, because I learnt from students, obviously, it was a generally known assembly place in front of the technical college on Charles Square. And then we marched, thousands of us, a huge procession towards the Castle. There was a closed street behind Lesser Town Square and we thus turned around and we walked towards Petřín through the Seminary Garden, and we climbed up this way. It was still covered with snow, I remember it. From up there we broke through, more or less by force, through the police line, and we stormed into the Castle courtyard. We stood there and then the police units began gathering there and appealing to us. We sent some of our representatives to the president, but of course they did not let them inside. And then they urged us to go away, and we remained standing there. This was followed by a command to attack, and we thus began singing the national anthem, and everybody stood attention, including the policemen. And we also sang the Slovak part, ‘Lightning over the Tatras,’ and it took a long time to sing the whole anthem. And when it was over: ‘Go away, immediately leave the place, in the name of the law!’ And before they started threshing us, we sang for the second time, so this had an effect one more time, but for the third time it no longer helped.”