Ivan Kvasnička

“From Kinských Garden up to Na Hřebenkách, there were piles of dead German soldiers. A transport was marching along, some Soviets drove by and mowed them down with a machine gun. Then there were the shaved women collaborators, who were chased and beaten. On Plzeňská Street people were bringing granite setts and putting them back, paving the street. Those were appalling moments that were never talked about.”

“The revolt ended on the ninth of May, towards the end of May we, members of the Intelligence Brigade, demobilised; in June we signed up at the former SS barracks in [Prague-]Nusle. They formed a battalion out of us and sent us first to Ústí nad Labem. There we experienced the beginnings of the pogroms: it was normal that when the boys went with the flag and someone on the pavement didn’t take off his hat, the second row went and beat him up. The second third day they transferred us from Ústí to Carlsbad, so we weren’t there during the big pogroms when they threw Germans from the bridge. Carlsbad was plundered, burnt out. Not a single house was standing in the area around the Upper Station, everything was bombed out. From Carlsbad we marched to Chodov, near Carlsbad, where there was a porcelain factory. There we could spend our Protectorate money, which was already invalid by then, and buy porcelain. My only gain from the war was that I brought my mum a tea set.”