Eliška Krejčová

"So I went, it was a terrible mess outside, terrible papers all over the floor. As I bent down a little bit, I said, "What is this? And it was food stamps, you know? But apparently, I thought, somebody else will pick that up and it will be, but then they put some sort of stamp on it anyway. So I went, and now, the street's not long, what I've, like, walked down. And then I had to turn right and I could see the gables of our semi-detached house, because it was on the main road, so I could see the gables. And now when I came out of the shelter, I couldn't see the gables. So I thought, that's too bad. Now, we had a stream there, it was called U jísku. There was a bridge over the creek, and the bridge was a broken by bombs. Now I'm surprised it didn't fall down, that it held, that bridge. And so I went on across all kinds of craters until I saw that the house had been destroyed."

"Before the war started we had friends from the Sudetenland, when Germany occupied the Sudetenland, so we had friends from there. We used to go there as children to work exchange (Handl), as they used to say. In order to know German. Sometimes my brother [went there] and they sent a child here. She was a friend of my mother's, not a friend, but more like a classmate. And she married a Czech, but they lived in the Sudetenland. And there they became friends with some married couple. And always, even from them, the boy came to us, and again my brother went there. And I also went there when I was about ten. I went to them, and she came to us again, her name was Traudl, she was a very big girl, a pretty girl, and later in life, when I was playing table tennis for the veterans, I learned from her that she actually married a friend from Teplice, they lived in Teplice. But I could not get in touch because the friend died after that, so I didn't manage to get in touch with her and I'm very sorry about that."

"If I didn't want to sign anything, they left and left me there for about two hours or I maybe more, I already lost any notion of time... I don't know, but it took a very long time. It was almost dark, so I was terribly worried about my man, so I wondered what to do. When I'm here, they threatened to be there until I signed it. So I thought - I'd sleep somewhere, my husband would lose it. At the same time, they told me that I should not tell anyone, neither my parents nor my husband, that they drove me there. I was so obedient again, so I really didn't tell anyone. Only now, after the 1989 revolution, when someone asked me about it, did I admit it, and I regret it quite a bit. So I thought, when it was written so cleverly there, it was just... And they also told me that if I saw any injustice or something wrong, I would tell them. Well, I've always been terribly fair.”

"They were some of you from that side, from the State Security or what, and I don't know what they were telling me there. All I know is that I've been watching where we're going. I didn't know the villages that much and we really went through some other villages for a long time, until we stopped at a villa finally. We got out there, we went up the first floor to a room where there was nothing but two chairs and a table, or perhaps a light, there was only a light bulb. So they wanted me there... they presented me with a document and they wanted me to sign it. Well, I didn't want to sign it, because they wanted me to sign something once before. We went to West Germany and I didn't sign it. That's when I went with Sparta and the Spartans said I was stupid, that I didn't sign it, that everyone signed it, so I should have signed it."

"I remember walking here to the main street, nowadays Palach´s, towards the place, and as I walked a short distance, our shield was already visible. And it just wasn't. Every semi-detached house had that attic, and I didn't see the gables. There was not even my grandparents, and there were really only ruins, and at the bottom there were still a buried my brother, dad, and mom. And the brother's wife, she got out, as I said, after the first bombing, such a hole was formed, so she climbed out of there and went to the neighbour's barracks, which was not ruined by chance. And then the second wave came, so they were still there, so people came here, acquaintances we knew. For example, a father's former apprentice came from Dolany, he just came to help."