Milan Kodejš

"And there is another story connected to this, that was already then, the revolution was actually over and there was a collection camp for captured Wehrmacht [members] in Motol. And they were being led down Plzeňská Street, the prisoners... they were boys and old men, they were such a bunch of soldiers, poor people. And across Plzeňská Street those parades went up to that Motol and they were led by our heroic RG, that was the so-called Revolutionary Guard, they had these red bands on their sleeves, there they had the RG and they were armed, but they were the ones who joined this only. And I also went there to see how they were going, where they were going, and I went to Plzeňská Street, where the Mlynářka pub used to be, it was a famous pub called Na mlynářce, there was a party, a slap would fly, a dude would fly, that's where the Košíře dudes would go to dance. And I was standing there watching them being led upstairs and suddenly I always look, like there's this soldier in the crowd, and they were serving him like this and they put him on the side of the road. Then it was only then that I saw and realized the horror that those heroic Revolutionary Guards from the waist up were shooting into that crowd with those rifles and just randomly killing whoever they could. I know it was just the Germans, that there was a war on, but even then this seemed like unnecessary horror."

"And then another huge experience was the revolution in '45, barricades were being erected everywhere and a huge barricade was erected right in front of our house. The roads were still cobblestone, so the cobblestones were being torn up, all kinds of stuff, everything was put up on those barricades, and after a hundred meters, all the way down to Černý vrch, there were barricades everywhere. And there was a terrible incident, my dad was dead, but there was a gentleman living in our house who was friends with our family and with my dad. Lojza Náprstek, a divorcee, a great guy, my mother married him later and he was such a nice guy that he tried to replace our father. I was still, when my dad died, I was eleven, my brother was three, but it was just a family tragedy. And he was the only one in the house who got a rifle and fought the whole revolution and was on Strahov."