Marie Vaňková

“And then, seeing that I attended the technical school, they had a hobby there, they set up a small shooting range in the factory. And because they’d go there after work, well then, he wanted me as a look-out, so he said: ‘Look, you’ll come with me and you’ll do some shooting, too.’ So I started shooting, and I was quite good at it. Then we started going to various shooting ranges in the vicinity, even outside of Prague. I got all the way to the national championships in Brno - that was still under the Czechoslovak Republic. And if you ask me when it was, I don’t know because I really just can’t remember any more. And which place I got, I don’t know that either, but I have the feeling it was third at most.”

“My boy was two years old. I had started putting him in a creche from when he was around eighteen [months - trans.] - that was before nursery school. So I was getting dressed in the morning to take him there, and there was some kind of a commotion in the street. People kept shouting: ‘They’re here! They’ve taken us!’ And so on. So I switched on the radio, and then I heard that something was going on. So I reckoned: ‘Look here, girl, you’re not going to work.’ The first thing that occurs to you is Mum and Dad, right. So I reckoned I had to go back home. So I took the boy. We went by tram, which was really, that’s still an odd feeling, even today. The people were talking, right, swearing. Afraid of what will happen. So I got home, our mum hugged us all together and said: ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’ So we lived there for two or three weeks. I didn’t go to work, I phoned my work. And at the time they excuse me. So then I only heard from those who did work, what the situation was like there. They were actually in Wenceslaus Square, as well, right, shooting up at the Museum and the Radio [House]. But they were also in the street where I was, Charvátová. That was the Škoda House, on National Avenue. They happened to have some scaffolding up at the time. So they said: ‘Man, really, we had them here as well. These types came here too.’ Back then they were really an odd assortment, I don’t know, either youngsters, or gaffers, like really old ones. They were shoddy, really, they were a sorry sight.”