Hedvika Stránská

"During the Protectorate, some components had to be handed over from the radio so that no one could listen to the radio abroad. So they made new ones in the factories, so Dad always mounted it there in the evenings when he used to go and listen. And when it got interesting, for example there was a speech, he called me too, but he said: ´Promise not to say a word to anyone.' And I had a friend whom I only met after the raid, it was already in the year 1945. Only with that radio. That was after the raid, we didn't see each other for two months, because they drove her out of Prague, same as they did to me too. And that's when we talked for the first time, even though we used to tell each other everything, because we were true friends. She already died, it's been two years and (we were) really amazing (friends). So during the war (we didn't say that) her dad (listened to) radio, that is, foreign radio, and so did mine. But then we clarified that. My dad listened to London and her dad listened to Moscow. But it was nice that we were, you know, girls, that we were friends, but we had to be so disciplined and were scared. Because we couldn't say anything anywhere, but we knew that something was being done that the Germans would not like us to do."

"I came back home and we opened the windows; they were opened so that the tables wouldn't break out. And then that the sky was blue, you heard a rumble. My dad leaned out of the window and said, 'Give me the binoculars!' My dad had the binoculars ready, and as the planes flew over us, we looked at them through the binoculars. And so Dad told me, 'Give me the binoculars.' So I handed it to him and ran after him to the window and he gave it to me. We pulled it from his hand. I remember we lived in Vysočany near Kolbenka, it was a block of houses, as I looked up, and they (the planes) flew over us, about six arranged in a nicely formed unit. As they were flying over us they created a form and another one was approaching from the other side; at that moment I climbed into the window and saw them dropping bombs on Prague."