Luboš Trucka

"And suddenly I see my mother letting me go, screaming and waving. I saw the bus that Mr Kotyza was driving at the time stop. He was from Chrastava and he was the bus driver. So, he loaded us up and asked what was going on. She told him that there was shooting up there, there were soldiers. So, he loaded us up and we went up through Šalďák [Šaldovo Square – trans.]. And there was a cordon of soldiers. They stopped the bus and now one soldier with a machine gun: 'Everybody out!' Only two kids stayed there, me and someone else, I don't know if it was a boy or a girl. Now he was charging it, and the driver was saying something to him, so he got hit with the butt of a machine gun, blood was coming out of his nose. And suddenly, out of nowhere, a policeman showed up, started talking to the soldier. I was looking at it from the window, because I was sitting more or less two rows away from the exit of the bus. And suddenly the driver comes back and only women get on the bus. The men stayed outside. The bus closed, the cordon of soldiers dispersed and we left for home in Chrastava."

"So, we went back to the square in front of the town hall and now I see a Russian tank trying to drive on the cobblestones and tracks, because at that time the tram still went down Pražská Street, so it was a bit slippery. When we were in front of the town hall, suddenly the shooting started. Bullets were flying over us, we didn't know - it was chaos, shouting, terrible noise. I remember there was a policeman standing there shouting to my mother: 'Run with the child to the arcade to hide, so they won't kill you!' We ran from the town hall to the arcade and I know there was some scaffolding on the left side of the town hall. And people were shouting that somebody had been shot on the scaffolding and they were dead. The shooting was directed at Šaldovo Square and at the corner house."