Zdena Krejčíková

"On the ninth of May, it was obligatory to visit the cemetery and the Red Army Memorial there. I don't remember what it looked like. And so the parade went there, but I didn't go there personally. With my friend, with whom I used to paddle a double kayak, with Slávka Brčáková, among other things a Yugoslavian immigrant and emigrant, we used to pick flowers and go... ( Maybe I've told you this before? I've told you this elsewhere already.) We went with the parade, but the parade turned into the cemetery, where there was the memorial of the Red Army. And we went straight on, with my friend and the flowers, we went to the American monument because there was a monument to the American army, it's still there today. Because those Americans actually came and fought there. Me and Slávka went there and we put the flowers there, we noticed also a wreath from the American representation. And the next day, Slávka and I went there by bicycle, because it was just a few kilometers outside Cheb. And our flowers were gone. Someone had a task of cleaning it up. The wreath that the American embassy put there was still there. But any flowers that someone else put there were gone."

"We were summoned to Bartlolomějská Street. I think that all of us were there...” (turning to Jiří Lukšíček – Rys and Jindřich Valenta – Vlk, ed.’s note). “Yeah.” (Jiří Lukšíček). “All of us. They interrogated us there: What, why, how; I don’t even remember it all, but I spent half a day there. At the end they told me: ´Don’t you think that you will now go and tell everybody that you have been here.´ Well, what do you think I did? I went to everyone I knew and I told them: ´Hey, I was...´ I came to Stopař, for instance, and he asked me: ´Have you already been there?´ I said: ´I’m just on my way from there.´ (Laughing). He had received a warrant to appear there. I can tell you that it was not pleasant at all, and while there, I was making such a fool of myself, thinking that they simply had to let me go, because it looked as if from the lunatics’ asylum in Bohnice."

"I was riding a train from Františkovy Lázně with a friend of mine, and as we were talking, I said to her: ´Look, the border is over there, it’s not that far away, what if... and how could we...´ We were sitting in a train compartment with wooden partitions. Some guy was sitting in the adjacent compartment and all of a sudden he came to us and asked us: ´You are serious about it?´ We replied: ´Yea, of course we mean it seriously.´ He replied: ´If you do, then on Tuesday at six in the evening at the lower railway station in Karlovy Vary.´"