Vlasta Wernerová

"When the executions started, I don't think it we learned about it from school as we did, for example... There were loudspeakers in Uhelný trh and they told us about Slánský and what a traitor he was. We heard it all that right there in Uhelný trh as schoolkids." - "That seems important to me, too. Was it broadcast from those bullhorns?" - "Yes, yes. For example, we used to play by the Krocín Fountain [it was probably the Wimmer Fountain] as children. Suddenly, when we were chasing around, a classmate would shout, 'You traitor Slánský!' at his classmate. The environment was just so full of that."

"The first day, it was Tuesday, now of course - as the tanks and such were coming, they had to move, and we couldn't go to work. The first thing in the morning I phoned work, that worked. They said, 'No, it's your duty, you have to go to work. No excuses for you; you work in administration, and you have to work.' I think I walked there. I hadn't seen the army yet until I got to the Vršovice railway station. There's a little park there, and the field kitchens were already there, everything was there. They actually didn't bother anyone. Still, people were afraid and were saying, 'There's some guy driving a car who's denouncing people,' and they were sharing the licence plates of cars that were denouncing people who had something to do with the counter-revolution. Just fear again."

"They took the booth away from us, and I have to say there weren't many people who wanted to help us because everyone was scared. Eventually, when they quashed his shop, my father went to somewhere at the magistrate's office, which was where it is now, and they assigned him a job and sent him as a former tradesman to work at Aero Vysočany, which was a long way away. He had to leave home at five o'clock just to get there. He just wasn't very skilled, I don't think he was much help there, but he he had to work because we were left completely destitute."

"I remember 1948, that was another shock, I was actually still a child. I remember what the protest in Old Town Square was like. I went to the St Ursula kindergarten. My mother went to the kindergarten to pick me up from Old Town Square and we would come back, and suddenly it just didn't work. All the doors of all the houses on Old Town Square up to Small Square were blocked, they were blocked so that there was a militiaman standing there with a rifle, and everybody was standing around Old Town Square. They were even standing in front of apartment entrances; not only was the restaurant downstairs closed. The windows were all closed, I think they might have been, I don't know that clearly, I don't really remember now. Everything was occupied, nobody was allowed to come to Old Town Square, Old Town Square was occupied by the militia. It was terrible, it was a shock for me because I hadn't experienced the war as such. I had just merely been born. Suddenly, there were these people standing in front of me... I would say they were these uncles to me at the time, the militia. Friendly faces, but they had rifles and prevented us from entering, they wouldn't let us go home."