Ing. Milan Černín

"There were no major air raids on Ostrava until the autumn of 1944. At that time, we were in Zengrova Street, we were in a shelter. And this huge bomb fell maybe fifty meters away from our house, on a flower bed by the technical school. Which was quite fortunate. If the bomb had fallen about five meters further, where the shelter was, where all the students were hiding, there would have been many people dead. There was this huge explosion. Even our house was shaking. I know, I cried, I cried a lot, and I called my dad. Of course, everyone was scared. My father was hiding in the Vítkovice Ironworks shelter and he survived. He was lucky. The bomb fell nearby, but it only wrecked his bicycle."

"It was in the afternoon. Suddenly there was a banging on the door, then the door opened and there were those three guys from the so-called economic control . They introduced themselves and stated that they had come to search our house because of a denunciation. They started looking for this so-called illegal foodstuff and in the process they started making mess in our appartment. My mother didn't like it at all, and because she spoke good German, she got into an argument with them. It ended with the German shouting, 'Now you're going to jail'. So my mother was imprisoned for three days, which was very difficult for my father. He had two children at home and he was on his own. After three or four days, through various friends and acquaintances, he managed to get my mother out of prison, because they didn't find anything, there was no evidence. So they would just drop the case. For me, as a boy, it was quite unpleasant to see those three guys, those gorillas dressed in leather coats, walking around the apartment, throwing everything around. It was a foreign invasion and I didn't understand why it was happening. It found it quite stressful."