Anna Fenclová

"It was terrible because the Americans had to leave, so it spread, you know, everywhere... There was no American zone here then. Well, and vice versa, like it was advertised at the time that Russian soldiers were disguised as American soldiers. I remember the day they arrived. We were at that May Day service at the church. And you could hear the rumbling. And all of a sudden the door opened, two - in helmets - officers came in. They took off their helmets, crossed themselves, looked around the church. And the parish priest turned from the altar and said, 'Calm down, parishioners. And they looked around like that, crossed themselves, put on their helmets and left. They were just waking up because at that time the Germans were still running down the national road to get to West Germany."

"But as I say, everything was pretty limited in that youth until the end of the war. And people had to help each other as much as they could. There were food stamps, for example. And when the food stamps ran out, they couldn't give you anything in the store. And there were all these bakers who made bread. And they'd take it by cart around the villages. Or they had this big dog and they would take it out. And now you had to give them a scrap or something... And when they checked it, we'd get the bread without the paper. And when they came to do the checking, how much he loaded and how much he sold, I remember that time - the gentleman's name was Mira - he opened it and blew into it. And it came out. And he said, 'I'm not going to collect it for you.' To save it, he was giving it to these people without it. It was all so strict in those days."