Ivanka Fišerová

"The next day [after the demonstration on Národní Street] I took my daughter to the cinema to see Pražská pětka [a Czech film] and we took the metro from Dejvice, where the screening was taking place, home to Nusle. And I said, 'You know what, let's get off the metro at Můstek and walk around Wenceslas Square. Because before that there was a canonization, not canonization, yes, canonization of Agnes of Bohemia. I didn't even see it, these things are new. 'Come on, let's go around.' And we walked on the side where´s Baťa. And as we were walking, I hear something like keys jingling on the other side. And there's a group coming. I thought, maybe I'm dreaming. But we were already halfway down Wenceslas Square and they were still walking. And I said, 'Baru, maybe these are the students. They might want to go to Opletalova Street because they couldn't go there yesterday.' I told her what happened [the day before]. 'Come on, I'll show you, we're not going with them, but I'll show you the St. Agnes' because I didn't want to take any risks with the daughter. But we met them [the students] at that St. Wenceslas. I stopped following them, but we met them there anyway. And as we walked down that Wenceslas Square, we saw in every passage, in every side street: police vans, policemen in white helmets with batons, crouched down, ready to just run out. They really ran out when we got there. And that was a shock for me too, because I didn't pay attention to the other group, or the group [of students]. And there they just started chasing us. We all ran into the underpass. And they were throwing bangers after us. So it almost makes you deaf. You don't want to go back. You really don't want to go back..."

"This, the occupation, was preceded by [military] exercises. I gave birth at the end of June and I was in a high stage of pregnancy and I remember going to the Technical Museum to sign a petition to make the troops leave because they were doing exercises here and they weren't leaving. And they were still here and they were still... So the petition was started and I went to sign it. I know that some two days after that or something, I brought my first son into the world. And when the occupation was going on, I was here in Vojkov, in Sedlčany, where my parents used to go, and I happened to be there with them. Because it was the first grandchild in the family, and the house was kind of, let's say, humbly furnished, very modest - there was no water in the house and so on, so I needed some help. My husband was working, so he was in Prague. And I still can see our dad at the radio. He had an old radio, so there were some wavelengths that there were still those stations - I know he listened to Luxembourg, for example. And we got news from the Western world about what was going on here. My brother was at the military service in Bratislava at that time. And my sister, because it was the holidays, was with us. And I didn't... I'm thinking now, the 21st counts the evening, right, the invasion. So it was already the 22nd in the morning. It was maybe 4:30. And I was breastfeeding in an attic room. And my mother came in to tell me that a neighbour had come to tell us that we were occupied. And the shock of actually having a new life here that you're cradling in your arms and actually feeding it so it can live. And yet you hear this news... We didn't know at all what was going to happen, whether it was going to be war or what. We really didn't know. So that was a big shock."