Hana Vondráčková

“My dad worked in the bank in the Na Příkopech Street, and he went by tram to a funeral in Modřany, but he did not arrive there. The tram stopped by the Jirásek Bridge and they told the passengers ‘you need to take cover somewhere,’ and ‘let’s go, everybody, we will hide in that house on the corner.’ That was the closet place to hide. My dad and several other people ran down to the embankment; there were public toilets there. Perhaps they are still there, I don’t know. They hid in the toilets. There was an enormous blast, and he then told us that the blast wave was so strong that they all rolled on the ground. When it was over and they got out, the house where all the other passengers from the tram ran to hide was in ruins. None of them survived.”

“Then there was the Velvet Revolution, and our company worked a lot for East Germany and for Russia, and suddenly there were no contracts. There was no work to do. Girls, it was terrible, I can tell you. There were two years when I was going to work and I was unhappy because I had nothing to do! There was a punch clock, and we had to be physically present there. But we had nothing to do, and I was solving crossword puzzles and reading and nobody scolded me for that, because this was a hard blow for everybody. From the full activity we suddenly went to a state when there was no work to do.”