Libuše Bílá

"I used to love going to Vladislav Street to work. Because I was a water girl from Lahovice, the rivers Berounka, Vltava, we knew how to swim from a young age, we liked to go swimming. But the swimsuits, that was a problem, wasn't it. The clothes tickets, my mother gave us few points from the tickets for stockings or sweatpants, not for swimsuits. She said, 'What's the swimsuit for, tell me?' So we used to go swimming in terrible rags, I have to say that. I used to take the tram to work, the 5 through Újezd to Národní Street. There was a shop on Újezd, not clothes, but underwear. Suddenly there were swimsuits behind the window. A girl's swimsuit. Black with orange flowers, two-piece. I always looked at the swimsuit from the tram, I wanted it so badly, I started talking about it at home, I wanted it so much. I told the family council, it was springtime, that I wanted that swimsuit so badly, because what I used to go swimming in, it was impossible for me to walk around in it anymore. And my family thought I deserved the swimsuit. My mom gave me a clothes ticket, I said I'd pay for the swimsuit, and I left work, and I couldn't wait for the work day to end. I went to buy this beautiful swimsuit. I went to the bathroom to put on the swimsuit, to show off in the swimsuit. And when I came into the kitchen in the swimsuit, the clothes ticket had, it was like this, it was like a leaflet, like a children's picture book, it had about three pages. And my mum was in the kitchen holding the ticket, and I walked in triumphantly in the swimsuit all excited, and she was waving the ticket around and saying, 'You're almost grown up now, and you're so stupid, you couldn't have asked how many points are needed for the swimsuit? Look, they cut out a piece of the ticket. You're going to need a coat for the winter, are you going to wear a swimsuit?' Well, I lost all happiness, it fell off me, I retreated back into the bathroom, I went to change, I put the swimsuit away and I was so ashamed, so ashamed."

"After that, four Soviet soldiers often slept with us, they were fun, they wrote in our memory books that were destroyed by the flood in 2002, and they taught us Cyrillic and their songs and were lookimg forward to coming home. That's what I remember from the May Uprising, those four Soviet soldiers were leaving because those Soviet soldiers were staying in every house in Lahovice. Who could take who, if it was simply some group of those soldiers and they were waiting to go home. They didn't leave until sometime in November. My mother told me that there was a pub there, it's no longer there, and that in that pub the locals said goodbye to those soldiers, thanked them for the liberation, and that it was awfully moving."

"I think it was Saturday and my sister went to violin lessons in Zbraslav. It was sometime after noon. Dad was at home, I don't know why. Otherwise he didn't come back from work until the evening. He turned on the radio and suddenly after a song there was a voice without a German introduction: 'We are the Czechoslovak Republic.' My parents hugged each other and my mother was wiping her tears. Then our neighbour Rosůlková came running up to us: 'Did you hear that? The war is over.' Dad told her something to the effect that it wasn't over yet and the fascists would fight, that it could still be very bad. My sister came back somehow early and told how in Zbraslav people were throwing German signs from the shops, that they didn't even play much, Mr. Červinka sent all three pupils home. He said he'd rather they didn't get hurt. I was ill somehow. I was lying down and my father organized us at home, saying that we had to go to the cellar with the most necessary things, leave the house unlocked and open all the windows. My mum, sister and I stayed home, my dad left. Mum made my bed on the leftover coal, gave me a big blanket and got some more for my sister. I remember we had drinking water in a jug in the cellar and a Primus kerosene stove. I think there was a foot of bread, too. I slept a lot, I just know my dad would come back sometimes. He said they'd built a barricade on the road to Radotín and that it was raining terribly. Other times he talked about guns, that they needed more. At the firehouse, he said they'd treat the wounded. Then one day he came back saying that it was too bad and wanted my mother to wash his boots well so that there would be no mud on them, so that it would not be known that he had fought in them. Then he told us how he and Mr. Srba carried the wounded from the cottages to the communal camp. Then the German soldiers came to the village house. Then soldiers turned up at our house. They searched the whole house, took my father away. Two local men with him. They led them under the bridge. After a while, three shots rang out. Mom figured it out quickly, then told us. We all cried. Late in the evening, Jarka Holečková, who was fourteen years old, came running to us and told us not to worry about Dad, that he was in Lochkov. We stayed in the cellar until 9 May, when Dad returned. He said that when they took him under the bridge, there were more of our people there. They lined them up and searched them, took their watches, and found a piece of cartridge paper in the pocket of the coachman from Klán family. He had to get out of line. Also Mr. Holeček and Mr. Červenka, they were brothers-in-law. One of them was wounded, the other was supporting him. And those were the three shots we heard."