"I flew all sorts of planes, all sorts of those school planes we had, 104, 106, hooded, unhooded, school planes, C5. There were two-seaters, pupil and teacher. We always went in pairs, always pupil and teacher, until the teacher allowed the pupil to go on a separate flight. They all had to go through that test take-off and landing. That was the designated takeoff and landing point."
"Botar, that was the Botič in Prague, so bombs were dropped there. My mother's sister was running towards us when the bombs fell. Sometimes they fell only small ones, hexagonal ones, the bombs were only half a meter high, there were a lot of them on the road. Fortunately, we escaped. One gentleman came to us to hide during the bombardment."
"They used to come to us when it got dark. And Nela's father, Mr. Klinger, he was an engineer, he used to come to our house and cover the Jewish star with his briefcase. He carried a briefcase attached to it, and he covered the star there. In the evening, when it got dark and not many people came, they would come to us to talk and stuff. Nelina was Jewish according to Mr. Klinger, and we were friends with her. Mrs. Klinger was friends with my mother and they went to Sokol together."
Stanislava Št’astná, née Pánková, was born on 10 September 1931 in Prague. During the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, she became friends with a Jewish girl, Nela Klinger, and her family. In the winter of 1945, she experienced the bombing of Prague in Vršovice, where she lived with her parents at the time. At the end of World War II, during the May Uprising of the Prague people, she actively participated in the construction of barricades in the streets of Prague. In Tyršova Street, she saw from the house where she had run to hide, a shooting at the barricades that had just been built. During the subsequent liberation of Prague, she was in direct contact with the Soviet soldiers. After the end of the war, she joined the Czechoslovak Army in 1951 and became a military pilot of the 50th Air Courier Regiment. In 1955 she married Josef Št’astný and had two children together. Subsequently, the family moved from Prague to Bechyně. In 1958 she ended her career as a military courier pilot and devoted herself to her family. From 1968 until her retirement, she worked at the Construction Company in Bechyně. In 2021, Stanislava Št’astná was living in a home for the elderly in Bechyně. She died in May 2022.
