Věra Styblíková

"At the beginning of the war we lived in Jiraskova Street, in one part of this flat because flats were quite scarce at that time. And there was this lady who had been living there with us who was a widow but she still had her mother with her. She worked in the Kapo factory, where gingerbread was made, and it was in that Palackého street, which is now the street next to the railway station. And she used to go to the theatre to work as a dresser, to earn some more money, in the evenings or on Sundays from three o'clock on. So she took me with her on Sundays at three o'clock, and we went to the theatre and she put me up there in front of the boxes like this, carefully, so that I wouldn't get in the way of anybody, and there they were showing those operas. Operas like On That Green Meadow, Daddy Longshanks and things like that. Well, like it was back then, you know. The theatre was full of Germans, and there were officers in the boxes with those 'Brunhildas' of theirs and soldiers stayed downstairs. And to this day, if I breathe, I can feel the smell of those grey-green uniforms. They said they were made... That they had nettles added to them, I don't know why. But the whole theater smelled like those gray-green uniforms. But I didn't mind, I had my eyes only for the stage."

"And I know that my mother once rode her bicycle to the bridge that crossed the Elbe, and there was a German patrol there, and the German patrol started looking through all the people's bags. They looked in this man's bag, he was carrying potatoes. That was bad! Either they took it, and there were people who would just spil the potatoes on the ground and trample them with their military boots. They didn't drink goat's milk, so they didn't mind, so my mother always managed to get home safely with it."