Jiří Dubský

"I have one experience of it. My father's mother, my grandmother lived in the house above us. She wanted me to have something to remember her, and she was saving up for a watch for me - and not some Pobeda, but she wanted Swiss ones for me. My dad had the connections, so he said, 'Grandma, I'll get Jirka that watch.' - And that I'll get them sometime around the age of 12 or 13. Grandma was saving for it, she had the money saved, and the currency reform came. And at that time my dad said it would cost so much, it was smuggled, it was no fun to get. So she already had the money for it - and then the currency reform came. Dad got the watch, but it was already priced in new money. And I know my grandmother said that she suddenly lacked a quarter of the sum for the watch. She just lost the money. My dad paid for the watch and I still have it."

"There was a [sirene] wailing and you automatically knew you had to go to the basement. Mothers had backpacks, suitcases, bags with the essentials ready to take down to the cellar. Sometimes they would call off the raid warning because, for example, the planes were going somewhere else. But the last air raid we experienced, [a bomb] fell a hundred and fifty metres from our house, it exploded there, it smashed the house and people died there. The pressure wave smashed everything that wasn't open, so it was blown off, and in the pub bellow us, all the bottles were broken. It was an unbelievable noise. My mum told me afterwards that she thought we were hit. And I didn't notice the horror in the cellar. It was me, my mum, my grandma, my dad, I don't know if he was there with us. Well, it was pretty bad, but we survived. Then there was an air raid on the Škoda factory, but by then our neighborhood was completely out [of reach]."