Alena Vejvodová

“When things opened up like this, we were naïve and had no idea that there would be people who would go and talk about it somewhere, you know. And then the big grilling came. And besides that… A teacher and her husband, an engineer, lived below us, and in 1969 they were going abroad—and it was already clear they would stay there. They gave us the keys to their apartment and everything. And it was known at school that we associated with them, and all of this made our situation much worse. From abroad on the one hand, and on the other hand just a bare salary—no overtime, no bonuses, not even a class teacher’s allowance, which was 90 crowns a month. So together we each had 1,250 crowns, meaning we lived on two and a half thousand for a month.”

"When it had to be blacked out, which meant that there were blinds that were paper black, and they were drawn like this. And of course the paper on that would tear, and dad would say, 'You mustn't even pull that,' because the Germans, if there was any light visible, they would shoot at the windows. So that was one fear that I had as a little kid, and another fear was that in '42, as we lived in Libeň and in Kobylisy, where there was a shooting range and where people would go and shoot there, patriots and so on. So I said, 'Daddy, what is that?' When I heard the volleys. 'Don't ask any questions! You mustn't ask anybody, I'll explain it to you one day. And that was the second fear that a child of three, four years old got."