Olga Pešoutová

"One Sunday my father came to work to find an application form for the Communist Party. I happened to be there when he asked Mr. Rudolf Císař, who came back from the concentration camp, for his advice, 'What do you think, should I join or not?' I don't know what he replied to him, but the truth is that he decided not to join the party. I was in the dining room where the decision was made, it was our living room, and I said, 'Thank god, my father didn't sign it.' And my father said, 'Well kid, this is just the beginning, you'll see.'"

"A carriage pulled by two horses was coming. There were two Krauts, as we called them. They were half-dressed soldiers, sort of in military uniform. They took fright as they saw us sitting in the woods... and one of them reached behind his belt for his pistol. Fortunately the other one, who was driving the carriage, stopped him and spurred the horse."

"We received a letter on 2 January telling us to move out. They declared the flat military. Even though it was my parents who had rented and found it on their own at the beginning of the war. And since my father was no longer a soldier, we were evicted. They said we were to vacate it immediately, that a big truck would be brought in on 11 January to take our furniture and all our possessions."

"He saw that the courtyard was full of tanks, and Toussaint told him, 'If we wanted to, we'd smash up Prague completely, but I'm not going to do it anymore,' and he went with my father. There's film footage of Toussaint with the white flag and my father walking over the barricades to Bartolomějská Street."