Marie Tobolková

"They fired him immediately, and he was then employed at Geoplán. That was on Na Příkopech Street, there was some kind of organization that was agricultural and he worked there as the administrator of all that, somehow... You know, it hurt his feelings very much. He would come, every Thursday a car would come and pick him up and he would go to the interrogations. And my mother and I, I was what - nine or ten years old - we didn't sleep at all until my father came back at twelve, for example, he didn't talk. Those were terrible times. And when they came to our apartment, they would go to each cupboard and throw everything out like that. And the youngest one, there were always three of them. They had these leather coats and hats and they were so rude. But they wouldn't beat us in any way, they never laid a hand on us, but the way they spoke was vicious, awfully bad."

"But as children, we knew practically nothing about the war, until we were in pre-school, around the age of six, my brother was older, so my parents took us for a while to - I can't remember now what it was called, there was a road from Klatovy - Běšiny, I remember now. That was a bigger village, and there were my dad's brothers and sisters, so we stayed there for about a week. And our experience was that they had this little cottage by the road, under the road, and there was a ditch on the other side, and the Americans used to go through there, after the war, and they always nodded at us with their feet. They had this unlatched gate, and they'd sit in the front, and they'd always put their feet up, and we'd wave at them. And they would throw us these little grey boxes with chewing gum in them, and chocolate and spread like they make today, like an almond spread or something. And we were just out of our minds. So we were there for about a week and we didn't want to go home because we always waved to those Americans. And we also tried to learn a greeting. I don't remember how well that went."