Věra Vohlídalová

"Předešlu to, jak bylo nebezpečné. Teda ty útoky na Londýn, tak všechny děti odvezly na příkaz vlády. Taky sami rodiče to chtěli, do zázemí, mimo Londýn. Kde já jsem to strašně těžko snášela. Asi taky, jak jsem nesnášela ty jesle. To odloušení jsem... měla jsem tam horečky. Lékař, který tam byl, řekl že to tam prostě nevydržím. Že bych tam opravdu strádala. Takže mě naši vzali zpátky do Londýna a tam to bylo zařízené tak, na to si právě vzpomínám, že vždycky když byl nálet, který já jsem už hlásila prej. Protože V-1 pískala. Dělalo to jenom velkou jámu, než dopadla tak pískala. DEin Ding kommt. Ta věc přichází. A už se letělo dolu do sklepa."

“I was a friend of some Inka Bayer, who was one year older than I, and because she was from mixed marriage, we spoke in German. Because I was not too good at it, and she was quite fond of it. And once went home, we both heard a boy screaming at us. And from the point of view of the five-year-old child I thought he was fifteen or fourteen, I do not know. But he was simply a child who shouted he would tell everyone that we were speaking German. And he went away and we were just like staring. And there was a group of people there, and an secret police guy dressed in uniform in a group of strange men. The boy went out there, said something to them, and the guy separated himself to follow us. So we speeded up the pace, and so did he; we started to run, both pied outselves. He kept running and screaming something at us. Fortunately, there was a house in front of the church, I have to go there once, which one it was, it was the kind of a tall house, but from my perspective, where my aunt or a relative of Inka lived. And we rushed in there, and she hid us. And then he left. And that meant for me that I would never speak German anymore. So I was ashamed of my German.”

“This one is an interesting photo, also from the 1950s. My father was still in the communist party and had certain issues. As he was rewarded to visit the Soviet Union and when he came back he was telling around about the Potěmkin villages. That there are some cows, which apparently milk around twenty litres a day, but maybe one or two of the whole. And as he was the way he was, he escaped from the group; as even nowadays you cannot go all around Russia, that is not simply, or in Belorussia. Well so he went to have a look to the farm and found out the terrible state of matters. Or he got robbed in the hotel and kept talking about it everywhere, that there are the same robbers as here. And of course he got into trouble for it. In the end when the expelled him from the party, he was told that he was against the Soviet Union and destroying things here.“

“Somehow, I just do not remember exactly, I found out, and I think Paul told me, that people were shooting it; that there was a videotape. The videotapes existed back then, right? So just somehow, it's also incomprehensible, what a man without a cell phone could do, we just got information from others, it was more complicated. That someone who had the videotape, just arrived to Liberec. So I first went to the library, I was still working at the hospital, and there I said, "Someone from the pedagogical-psychological counselling, I think it was Honza Bauer, has a videotape, so who will go with me? That was quite courageous. And nobody wanted to go with me, so only Jana went with me. It was Sunday. On Friday was November 17, I learned on Saturday, and on Sunday people were so excited, that's when we called. And there was someone actually there, and gave us a copy from the office. So I took it and on Monday I called various departments in the hospital, people who were away, I said, "I have a videotape from Prague on November 17 from the National Avenue." And now, they people were coming in and watching it, just a few minutes of recordings it was. But there was the beating, the shields, what you now all know, and those with batons and much screaming, the candles, and the kids just kneeling down there with those flowers.”