"We arrived in Bratislava and there were already banners, Dubček and glory. So we were glad to be home, but we didn't have tickets because we only had a ticket for the Bulgarian border. The ticket inspector came and asked where our tickets were, that we had to buy new tickets. We didn't have money, nothing, nothing, because we were supposed to go home by plane. He waved his hand and we arrived in Prague in the evening. That was a shock. We got off the train, and there were tanks, Russian soldiers, in front of the station in that park near the Wilson Station. We got off the train, first we went to eat in a restaurant and then we said we would take the bus home, but the buses didn't run either. Fortunately, we caught the first bus that was going to Liberec, got on it and arrived in Liberec. There we were greeted by our parents, or rather I only had my mother, but Jitka's parents greeted us and said: 'Why didn't you ratehr stay there? You could have stayed in Yugoslavia, or you could have gone to Vienna.' So we said, 'We're not going to leave you here.'"
"(The currency reform) hit us hard because my bride Jitka had a savings account. The savings was to be given to her on the day of her marriage or something like that. And because the currency reform came, all the savings were converted one to fifty. That is, when we got married, the father of wife Jitka brought the savings book and said, 'Here I give you the dowry that I have saved for twenty years to give to your husband,' and it was 167 crowns. 167 crowns dowry."
"Huge groups of the German army were passing across Pardubice from east to west towards Prague. Those troops were already demoralized, they already knew that they were losing the war and that this was a retreat and a flight of troops to the west. Mostly they were just horse-drawn wagons. These were continuous lines of troops as they moved through Pardubice. And my brother and I even once walked up to a wagon that the soldiers were sitting on and took their rifles and they let us take them. So we also took part in disarming the German army."
"Was there any dramatic end to the war when the Red Army came to Pardubice? Do you have any memories?"
"I do, because I was playing the accordion at that time. When the Russians came, the accordion was a huge bond and I had to play for them. I remember playing for them for two days and two nights straight and new ones kept coming. I was a translator in the commandant's office because I was learning Russian for the last year of the war. So I was employed as an interpreter at the commandant, and therefore I played and translated and was actually employed there for several days."
"Back then it was a strategic road - the shortest connection between Prague and Warsaw. It was assumed that if the war started - they were scared of war then - so that's where the tanks would go. And all the curves had to be paved with cobblestones, because the tanks, if they braked the tank tracks in the curves, they would tear up the asphalt, so all the curves were paved. And otherwise it was all asphalt roads. And the curves were paved with cobblestones. Nowadays, of course, it's all asphalt, there's no cobbles nowadays, it's all asphalt roads. But back then it was like this, as a strategic road between Prague and Warsaw, the shortest. So it was cobblestones."
"I had an office in the village, they gave me one room on the ground floor, so I had a view from the window of a little square. And suddenly on Saturday there was a market on the square, a big fair. And I was looking out of that window, working there, writing my a journal. And suddenly I saw that there was a butcher leading a cow that he bought at the market, because there were cattle sold there too. So he bought a cow and was taking it to slaughter. And the cow apparently had some bad premonition and in the passageway in the house where was the butcher shop, there it broke away from him and ran up the stairs and into the ballroom. That was both a butcher shop and a pub, wasn't it. And she ran across that ballroom and she saw the window open, so she ran to that window as a sort of an escape point. And when it reached the window, it was about to brake, but its hooves slipped on the floor and the cow went through the window and fell from the first floor, it did a somersault and fell to the ground. Of course, fortunately it didn't kill anybody because there were a lot of people there, but fortunately it just fell among the people so she didn't kill anybody. The butcher of course ran out, the cow was shaken by this. The butcher cut its throat right there and dragged it to the butcher shop in that back wing where he had the slaughterhouse where he was originally going to slaughter the cow. And that's how I actually eye-witnessed a cow jumping out of the first floor window."
"We were in Pardubice, and I experienced a total of three air raids in Pardubice. The first one was at night, it was a raid on the outskirts of Pardubice. And apparently the raid was badly organized and not targeted to the right places where it should have been. The first raid was aimed at the outskirts of Pardubice, in a residential area. And not much happened. But the second raid after that and the third raid, they were aimed at the railway station and at Fantovka, which was a petrol factory, they made petrol. And that was a big one... That was around noon, around noon, and that raid actually destroyed the station and the petrol factory."
Stanislav Dvořák was born on 12 January 1928. He moved many times during his life. His father was a trained baker, but he also worked as a doorkeeper in hotels or on construction sites, and for a time he was unemployed as a result of the great economic crisis of the 1930s, and the family experienced months of poverty. After the outbreak of the Second World War, his father had to work in Germany for six months or a year before he was able to return to Pardubice, where the family survived the war and also experienced the American air raids in 1944. After 1945, Stanislav was able to finish a secondary technical school in Liberec, where he graduated, and then started working as a construction supervisor. Both the witness and his wife were greatly affected by the monetary reform of 1953, when they lost the money they had saved for their future housing and household equipment. After 1968, Stanislav Dvořák was expelled from the communist party and dismissed from his job because he disagreed with the entry of Warsaw Pact troops. During the communist regime, as the son of a former tradesman, he was not allowed to go to university, which he did not complete until after the Velvet Revolution. In 2022, Stanislav Dvořák was living in Liberec. Thanks to the support of the Liberec Region, we were able to record the witness´s story.
