Přemysl Tvrdoň

"We were never rich. I have one more thing to say. Like property. As parents, we never had extra possessions. Although dad was a technical officer. But we wanted, well, we didn't want, but my parents, and mostly my mother, wanted to buy the house that we lived in in Židenice in a sublet, so we wanted to buy it. But they had some money, and they would lend us some money, maybe Uncle Václav or Uncle Míra, and they would pay for it. But by then Zapotocky was already president. Antonín Zápotocký, who started to declare on the radio that our currency was fixed, that money would fall - that's what the enemies of our state are saying! Boom. In a fortnight the money fell, my parents lost everything and never recovered."

"Well, we ended up in Lažánky with some friends. Only my mother was there with us kids, my dad worked in Brno. In those days, there were no transport companies like there are now, but you walked a lot. We had an apartment in Brno, there was the Zbrojovka factory - and Zbrojovka was bombed a lot. And in those days the bomb throwers were not so accurate. It was flying there, the dispersion was very big. It hit the school there, it destroyed our gymnasium. When I started going to school, the gym wasn't there yet, there were just columns. So then they moved away, they stayed with the Koláční family in Lažánky. That's where my mother survived the rest of the war with us. And dad was in Brno and only went to Lažánky on Saturdays and Sundays. But he went, mind you, that's in quotation marks. Because he went to Komín, there were no shuttles beyond that, nor to Bystrce or anything. It ended in Komín. And then he walked across the dam to Veverská Bítýška and from Veverská Bítýška to Lažánky. On foot, take it! On Saturday he walked there and on Sunday he had lunch and after lunch he walked back to Brno."