Marta Uhlíková

"I remember it like today! It was August [1968], a beautiful morning, we had been going to work since six o'clock. And suddenly I hear my mother: 'The Russians have taken us, there is war!' You're dreaming... Before I wake up, I think to myself, Jesus Christ, what happened? My mother ran out in her overalls, I see her like today, and she was running from house to house, banging on the door, saying: 'The Russians have taken us, there's a war. We've been taken over by the Russians!' Then we saw their cars and we were scared. Not that we weren't, everybody was. A lot of people were angry, really angry. And at that time I know my father-in-law and mother-in-law took them in and gave them food. And some people, even in the shop, they didn't want to sell them anything, they didn't accept that they gave the Russians food."

"I did not experience [the removal of the Germans] directly, but I know from the story of my aunt, who experienced it because she is a native. She said that when they came there after the fifties or around the fifties, they were called the Red Guards, they chose the better houses, of course. There are beautiful villas there, at the beginning of Sucha the first one was a beautiful villa. Whoever of the Germans lived there, what the lady was wearing, she couldn't even take the fifty kilos she was entitled to, and they threw her out. That was the Red Guards. And it had a terrible effect on me as a child, because I never knew my dad to hurt anybody or call anybody names, I never experienced that."