MUDr. František Plhoň

“There were forty-eight injured in Liberec, nine dead. From the first wave of people, I remember a nurse named Livečková, who underwent a surgery. She worked in the hospital. She walked to work and was shot in her neck. She died too. I remember these names, you remember them till your death. The forty-eight injured lay in the operating theatres, in corridors, or even just on the floor. Those whose hands and arms were shot through waited patiently. There was this huge solidarity. No one grumbled, everybody understood the situation. Later, people from Děčín told me that nothing happened there. That people took stores by the storm and bought flour and salt, fearing for the war to come. This was not the case in Liberec, there many people were really injured or killed.”

“But in 1952, in the spring, he suffered a stroke. He recovered, only had a speech problem but even this improved. His arm was weaker. And it was in this condition, about two months after the accident, he received a letter from the municipality that they had to move, within a fortnight, from Prague to a place in the Chomutov region. I think it was Kovářská, so they wanted to check it. It was an empty house, abandoned and derelict, left by the Germans. In his condition, he would have certainly died there. This was a campaign in which the uncomfortable pensioners were moved from Prague, it even had a name, I think. Well, pensioners were to leave Prague. So for everything he did, Prague moved Engliš out of his own villa.”