Marie Wollnerová

“In 1968 my daughter was nine years old. My husband’s factory had organized a summer camp for children where she went. On 21 August it was her birthday. On 20 August I went to the post office and sent her a telegram: ‘Sweetheart, I wish you all the best and there is a present waiting for you at home.’ I bought her a hand sewing machine. She had sewed ever since she was little. In the morning we woke up – it was 21 August, there were tanks below our windows and I thought war broke out. My husband turned pale, he didn’t handle these situations well. I said: ‘Take your shoes on and let’s go pick the girl up.’ They were in Ondřejov, not far from Prague. I thought war had broken out and that I won’t see her again if I don’t get there. By that time we haven’t had a car. ‘Take your shoes on and let’s go there on foot!,’ I said. So we took hiking shoes, backpacks, walk to the Palacký bridge where they turned us back. There were two tanks there facing each other, making a passage for a single person. They haven’t let us through. I was completely mad but luckily the factory made sure that in three days’ time they brought us the kids back.”

“We lived in the kitchen and one room without running water, without a toilet. We had to walk eleven stairs to go to the toilet and tap water was only in the hallway. We used to go there with a watering can. So this is how we lived. We were poor but I wasn’t hungry. Still, I remember my grandma bringing over a loaf of bread, scraping the flour off so that she could make a roux. Also, there was a ration of 0.5 liters of milk per week. For this reason my mummy went to work in a dairy. It was a private dairy at Arbesovo náměstí. She distributed milk among households, also to German women. They had a purple stamp on the lid, meaning it was whole milk. Us regular people had skimmed milk. But my mum swapped the bottles and I had to wait her somewhere in the house before leaving for school. It was severe frost then. She forced me to drink the cream up. It was icy, I didn’t want to drink it but she slapped me and said: ‘Drink it up, it’s healthy!’”