Anna Wernardová

"When they came to search our home, my father was in Karlovy Vary and we had no news of him. They didn't tell us anything about him during the search. They took away the correspondence they found, even the children's correspondence, my letter to Ježíšek. My mother said, 'You're not going to take that with you, are you?' They said they were interested in everything. Mum said not to take the tram pass, when her husband came back from the spa he wouldn't be able to go to work. And they just said, 'He won't need it.'"

"My father had a very good guess, because after the elections in 1946, when the Communists won, he said we were in for a problematic time. In 1948 he called us in - I knew he was a Social Democrat - and he sat us down at the table, my mother, my brother and me, and he said, 'Children, this concerns you and it will concern you too. Tell me what to do. Either I merge with the Communists, because Social Democracy has merged with the Communists. It is against my convictions and I will be ashamed, but you will be able to go to school and we will continue to have an apartment with a bathroom. Or I won't go in, I'll certainly be arrested as an anti-communist political functionary and you won't be able to go to school, you won't have the apartment you're used to. So what am I going to do?' My mother said to do what feels right. We said we didn't understand, but to do what he thought was good. That's the way it's always been with us, too. Dad said, 'I'd be ashamed to look in the mirror.'"