Josef Platz

“It was quite certain that when they gave me an application to join the communist party, I told them to shove it up somewhere. I did not say that to them, I just told them I would not sign it, but I thought so, and of course, when they cut me off from work and my wife was out too, as she did not have the opportunity to make any money. We had two kids, so I thought, so if I was going to stay half a year and if I did not get any work, we'll pack it up. Eda wanted to leave a long time ago, if it had been up to her, she would be gone in 1968 already.”

“When the famous Prague Uprising broke out on May 5th, so my dad was at work, so he was somewhere in the barricades, and we were home and waited for what was going on, which was quite a lot, because at night the Germans they defending themselves by taking regular citizen out of the houses, their flats and guiding them in front of the tanks as shields - today called the live shields - and chasing the people to clear the barricades to let the tanks pass, so it was that... it was terribly anxious and we were all afraid. So I was afraid too, even though I did not know at that time I was like, seven or eight years, and I could not imagine what was going on.”