Hana Mařanová

"That was quite early¨, in the beginning of the war. Dad asked me if I had told anyone that we were listening to London, and I said no. It was only later that I confessed I had told a girl. And dad said that if it hadn´t been for the post office, it would have been a concentration camp. Because the letter hadn´t been registered, the post officers hid it. It was known that there was one informer, but he couldn't ask about it second time because he hadn´t signed it. It was anonymous and thanks to good work of the post officers, it turned out well. Besides, dad had another problem, his ration cards were missing. Mum, when she was selling, she gave everybody extra food. All it took was fifty grams there and fifty grams here, and after a while it added up. Dad was terrified to find out that about five kilos of margarine was not covered by ration cards. The punishment for that was a concentration camp, too. He went to a crafty village businessman who got them for him."

"It was horrible how people were changing before our eyes. You had known someone well, and then suddenly that person got different. His eyes began to shine so strangely. They kept going to meetings. Then there was a gathering in Old Town Square with Gottwald. I can confirm that the people in the square were not from Prague. They were people brought from all over Bohemia, especially from Kladno. Our plant was situated almost opposite Masaryk railway station, and so we could see well the flow of crowds walking down Havlíčkova Street and then along Celetná Street to Old Town Square. I asked our top communist if we would have to go there too, because at that time we had to go to every gathering to make it look as if many people were there – as a back-up. And he asked what I thought, that only adept communists could go there, that only four people would go there to represent our enterprise. And we were several hundred employees! You could see that that was a gathering which could be brought together after a lot of verifying and organizing."

"But what would I say about February... it is said, or I don't know who started it, there is a kind of defamation of the Czech nation, that they shout once to support Beneš and later [to support] Gottwald, it is nonsense. There were too few people from Prague in Old Town Square. I worked in Prague in Ferra company, it was a national enterprise in Havlíčkova Street opposite Masaryk railway station. There were balconies there and I was standing on the balcony with a colleague, and we were watching the flow of people arriving by train and walking down Havlíčkova Street, through Poříčí and along Celetná Street to Old Town Square. There were a lot of miners, iron workers and I don't know who else, communists from all over the country brought there to ensure that there would be their people. With my friend Jiřka, we were scared, I said, 'We'll have to go as a back-up, too,' and we didn't want to. I cautiously asked our top communist, 'Will we go too?' And he said, 'Please, what do you think? Only adept comrades will come there, only four of us will go to represent our enterprise.' So I realized that there were not Prague people, but communists brought in from all over the country. They were afraid that there would be some kind of trouble."

"My dad was reported to police for listening to foreign radio. And that meant death at the time. And it was only thanks to good people at a post office that it [the letter] wasn´t delivered. It hadn´t been sent by registered mail, so they hid it, just like this, at the post office. And that's how it... But they told my dad so he'd know about it. Because dad asked me at the time if I'd told anybody that we were listening to foreign radio. Anyway, I know I could do it, I switched it on anyway, even when my dad forbade it. Lidice, Ležáky, Lidice was a complete horror! I remember my grandmother crying and shouting at me, 'Turn on the radio!' So I turned on the radio, I still remember where the radio was placed in our kitchen. It was just finishing: '... whoever knows and does not report it will be shot with his whole family, I repeat, will be shot with his whole family.' Well, that was sheer horror, it can't even be explained."

"Unfortunately, it ended up as it ended up. Munich is really a great trauma. They blame Beneš for Munich being his greatest trauma, [but] it was probably the trauma of all of us. My sister, two years younger than me, whenever she later heard the tones of Vyšehrad music piece, when she still was a child, she would say, 'This is Munich,' because the jingle had been going on all day long, when we had been waiting for president Beneš to speak. And my uncle came to see us, we were in my father's office. And they asked why Beneš didn´t speak, why he had not spoken yet. There was nervousness all day, I was curled under a small table, I was a ten-year-old child. I wasn't ten yet when Munich happened, and I was a bit older than ten when the Germans came. Then he [Beneš] finally spoke, I still remember some of his words, that we had been left alone, that there was simply nothing which could be done. Curiously enough, my parents and everybody else were sensible, that there was really nothing that could be done, because it would have been a slaughter. Nothing could be done, once England and France had left us, there was nothing that could be done. And all the criticism of President Beneš is absolutely pointless. Well, then [came] the fifteenth of March, I remember it, bad weather, snow falling. Grandma was crying. We children were watching it as if nothing was happening, and we just said to ourselves that the Germans weren't so bad. They weren't bad, they set camp in the square, loads of motorbikes. And they were making soup and giving it away to people. But people didn't come. People didn't come, they didn't take anything from them."