Marie Čondlová

“My classmate from Master School of Cabinetmaking came along, he opened the gate to the driveway; he was surprised to see me there. There were three of them, they said they were coming to nationalise the company, Reindl - where was my father? Dad came downstairs, we called up all the workers, and they were told: ‘Comrades, from now on this will be yours, this man has no say here.’ We wrote reports on where the stock was, what was in the loft, what all my father had forgotten to declare. It took a few hours, we left, handed over the keys, and that was that. Then we had a meeting of the factory worker’s union, we discussed what to do with the master, my father. What could be done with the boss: ‘Oh well, let’s hang him.’ The workers said: ‘What are saying? We were glad we could work here, and you want to hang him?’”

“At the time there were liberating Americans in Volyně. And they set up their base in our modern school, so we had to live in various private apartments. I lived in a private flat at the time and not with the boys at the residence hall. I remember how the boys were sad because the Americans took off their uniforms, threw them on a heap, burnt them, dressed up in new uniforms, and drove around. That’s how the Americans liberated Volyně near Strakonice. That was the first year of the liberation.”