Jiří Sýkora

“On 20th August there was a rumble at half past ten in the evening. We lived in Vršovice and planes flew from Strašnice, i.e. from the east. And, I said: 'Those are Russian bombers.' They were recognizable not as airplanes, but one recognized what type, what model of airplane it was. I said: 'What is going on, they are flying over us, they are fooling around here, it's some kind of exercise or something, well anyway.'”

"Well, on the evening of the May 5th, the Germans came there, they came from Benešov with tanks, the SS units came there and drove around our fields with those tanks behind the house, literally behind the garden, behind our house. However, they haven't ventured into the barracks yet. One thing they did was that there was a farm that farmed those fields, called Reitknechtka. And there they had the Czechoslovak flag on the 5th. Well, the Germans selected all the men from the age of fifteen to the oldest they found there, left them there, near today, it was called Moderna. The Moderna, the communists demolished it when they were building the highway, as it was in their way. It was such a first-republic, super architecturally elaborated modern house. Well, somewhere nearby they had them dig graves, a grave that was, and there were about ten or fifteen of those guys from that farm and they shot them all.''