MVDr. Jana Drašnarová

“In general, the regime took place; the time has come to disturb the peace there. People started to be afraid of supplies. I remember one farmer could not deliver enough, and he was taken to jail. The farmers poured water into the milk so that they had the amount they had to hand in the watering cans that were weighed. Worries began. Fear. Fear of the upcoming times, which did not exist before. And on top of the overall fear a man, who married my foster daughter, came to our household. He began explaining to them that his party would never forgive him marrying to a family where they care for a child of traitors of the nation. They just quarrelled until they played it, and I had to leave. Although the foster parents said: 'We will not take her anywhere, so you will do yourself!' So the daughter was taking me to the orphanage. Of course, no child likes changes. It was terrible, too. But I said nothing out loud, I didn't want them to see that it bothered me.”

“When we arrived in the streets, we found out that the streets were closed by some kind of police cords. So we broke into a street, and we couldn't go back. Then the cordon closed from the other side. The cordon was closed from the other side, and we were accumulating without the opportunity to escape, and this way they artificially stuffed us somewhere in the Fruit market in Brno. There was nowhere to run, so there were more and more of us. First from the nearby windows, we went ahead some street, it was called Czech, I think, so the housewives were throwing dishes or glass, anything on the street at the soldiers. And the soldiers said, 'Don't be fooled, we don't have ammunition!' They showed us, I don't know how to open a weapon, showed us they had no ammunition, they sent them against us just to intimidate us. But then they came the state security policemen. They had ammunition already, beat us with batons. But it was somehow artificially created, that we had nowhere to run, to create something, to have a reason to show off: 'Look what they are doing here against us, against the state power.' I went to buy a book, and the other one came in with me, and the poor guy was beaten with a baton, too. Then he showed me such a crazy strip on his back, all red from the baton. Then we ran a little uphill, on the Green market, because we found out that there were some civilians behind the policemen, the People's Militia. And they wore no uniforms, or if they had any, they didn't look like military. I turned and saw one kneeling, his arm resting on his knee and aiming. And I said, 'Man, there´s trouble ahead, they want to shoot!' And they really started shooting! A boy fell to the floor beside me. So, I went to see. I thought he was shot in his hand; something was flowing here. So, I was screaming, whether anyone was wearing a tie, thinking I was going to tie his hand up. But he… He was killed…”