Jan Vosáhlo

"I remember we used to go shopping. We went shopping. The Czech was buying ten or fifteen deca of emmental, fifteen deca of gothai. The German came in: 'I'd like some Emmental or Eidam cheese.' 'How much?' 'A whole doughnut.' A whole ham donut. That was when they were comfortable here. They'd be like little flunkies, fifteen sixteen eighteen years old, they'd buy a bottle of champagne for a few marks, sit on the kerb and drink from the bottle because they could afford it. It was no problem for them. There's a pub here called the Red Mill that specialized in fried cheese and potatoes. I don't know if the Germans didn't know it, they certainly didn't know it, because they went to that pub by the hundreds. The pub was always full for lunch. They made fried cheese, everybody who came in wanted fried cheese. They were served fried cheese, and after finishing their meal, the staff eagerly, perhaps politely, perhaps not, ushered them out. Because outside, there was a line of people waiting to get their fried cheese as well."

"Hotel Bílá labuť, from whose balcony Hitler spoke, stood on the corner of the square, here, next to us a short distance away. There was talk at the time that the hotel would stay, but that it had to be remodelled because it was unsuitable for today. So the army came with bulldozers, trucks, transporters, I remember them, and they started to demolish one building after another. They were knocking something down from the outside, so they flattened it. They demolished this hotel Bílá labuť so that they wanted to keep the shell, demolish the inside and build it anew inside. But the minds of the day came up with all sorts of other ideas. So first they took the whole inside out on transporters on trucks and took it away. And then they tore down the whole shell."

"There's a map hanging on the National Committee here, it's an aerial shot of the town of Kraslice. And the strange thing is that Kraslice, when seen from above, is a swastika. That's such an oddity. And that's why Hitler was here, Hitler visited Kraslice. There's a kind of circular column about a meter or more in diameter by the cultural center, and there are big pictures of the original Kraslice. There is also the Hotel Prague and the balcony from which Hitler spoke to the public. There are a number of photographs of old Kraslice, because there was a photographer who took pictures of Kraslice at that time, just after the war and during the war, also unfortunately no longer with us. So I also have a number of original Kraslice photographs at home. It doesn't look anything like today's Kraslice."

"I have an experience from that time - when Gottwald died, of course it was celebrated in a sort of mournful way. But I have a greater experience when Stalin died, Stalin died in 1953, I think. At that time we were listening to the radio and at Stalin's funeral a huge Georgian choir was singing and they were singing - at that time they said it was Stalin's song Suliko. Suliko, that was an incredible experience for me. I can say that I'm almost without hearing, but before I lost my hearing, I liked to listen to it on the computer, where the music was. Because for me, even today, it would be a surreal experience. Because it was a hundred-voice or I don't know how many-voice chorus of those Georgian singers."

"We used to go and look at it because the courthouse in Rakovník is at the bottom of a slope and the town cemetery is up on top of the slope. And below the slope is the courthouse and there were cells there. So we - apparently my mother had arranged it - so we used to go and wave. Daddy behind a barred window and we'd stand on some kind of a wall and see each other. We waved, you couldn't talk because it was - I don't know if it was forty, fifty or more meters. It wasn't for any conversation. It was only when my father was transferred to work in Horní Bříza, there was a ceramist there, I don't know what's there now, they made toilet bowls, washbasins, bathtubs and I don't know what else. He then worked there and was allowed to visit. In our case it ended up that there were four children and four of us didn't go. Only two of us could go, we were there a couple of times, my father was not there for long fortunately because he was sentenced to eighteen months. He wasn't there for the whole eighteen months, I think he was there for fourteen or twelve. So we weren't there very often and my father came back. It was after Christmas, I know he promised us, 'We'll have Christmas when I come home,' because he came back in January."

"My parents were from East Bohemia, my father Alois was a goldsmith and watchmaker, my mother, because she had four children, was a housewife for a long time. She only went to work when there was some strange thing, which of course was worn in those days. My father was a goldsmith, a watchmaker, a tradesman, so they came to check on a denunciation. We children were on holiday at the time. In the meantime, State Security, or whatever it was, came to look in the apartment and they were looking for a hidden supply of gold. I don't know if they found it, but I don't think they did. The truth is that we came back from vacation and all the thresholds in the apartment had been ripped out, the bathtub had been knocked over. My father was not at home, he was already secured and later sentenced to eighteen months as a seditionist or whatever it was called then. In short, my father was not at home."