Evžénie Škubalová

"We lived in an apartment house, on the first floor. There was a shop, a grocery store, below us. The shopkeeper lived on the fourth floor. He came and said he would address people from our balcony. Mum wouldn't let him, but he had his way, because she was alone and people took advantage of her because of that. He talked and talked, and basically nothing happened to him, but on 2 May, twenty-one people were arrested here and executed them in Lazce. I don't know why that was, but we go there every year to commemorate it. That's my memory of 2 May. The war ended only on the fifth or so in Prague, but the uprising started here in Přerov. I was eleven years old."

"At least, I have the graduation certificate, but I didn't get the recommendation letter. I talked freely about how things were during the war, how Štěpán Klein who owned a soda water plant supported us; he ended up badly, he used to sit in a wheelchair by the window at home. I don't know how he ended life. He helped us. Father Bílek, I remember him coming to visit us. I don't know if he gave us money or food, not knowing is better sometimes. That's how we survived. And, because I said that my mother voted for National Socialists instead of Communists - you had to vote for 1, or 2, or 3, or 4 at the time - she didn't want me to take the graduation exam."