Františka Veselá

"At that time [of the Prague Uprising], we were in a shelter in the ministry building. It was not a shelter built as a shelter but an underground space where the archives were. We even had a group of people there, there was a wedding. One of those days, they had a wedding, probably at the beginning of the revolution, because they couldn't go home anymore. They were some people from the countryside probably, relatives of one family. They came there to have some kind of a get-together, but they never got anywhere and stayed with us in the shelter. We slept on the ground. But as far as food was concerned, we were well supplied - I don't know how that's possible - from the slaughterhouse. That's a short walk from Těšnov. So we were getting salami, pastries, that was from Prague 7, that was also a short distance away, there were these mills. So the food was taken care of."

"That day in early October, it was a Saturday, my mother sent me to go shopping. Hanička Rusňoková, who was a friend of mine, met me there, the only girl far and wide, she came with me and one other boy. We went to the shop. We had to go into town. We ran back, and I said, I remember exactly, 'Once we will run for real,' because they kept talking about it in front of us. And now we came around the corner between the buildings, and there was a tractor in front of our house, and it was a tow truck. Daddy was in the window of our apartment building and he was throwing flowers out the window to Mommy. And there was all the furniture that could fit on that barrow. There were several families of us. And Daddy, because he had a license to drive a tractor, then he got in the tractor and went to Frýdek. There was the headquarters of the State Forests and Estates. I went with my mother to the station in Těšín. We waited there overnight. Or did we go to Frýdek? I think we went to Frýdek because that's where Daddy was going. There, I waited at the station with my two-year-old brother. He was lying wrapped in a woollen blanket on the bench. It was busy there because it was starting to empty out, it was just chaos. We left with my mother and my brother for Moravia. And Daddy came to us to get some things but stayed in Frýdek. Then they returned the next day to the apartment, but you know, it had already been searched... And what they took away, they stored in Frýdek at the sawmill. Because then that day, that Saturday, the final order came for the Czechs to leave the territory of the region ofTěšín."