Irena Podzimková

“Well it was wartime and life was not easy at all. What influenced me most was food. We did not have enough food and everyone was hungry. So my father, as he came from Pardubice, that means it was in the region of Polabí, he was from the village, where there were large estates, and he had some acquaintance there and they used to visit, not alone but with many other people in similar situation but the villagers did not want any money, as they were of low worth. Actually clothes, jewellery and other stuff were brought there for exchange. My father worked in Orion factory, which still exists nowadays, producing chocolate and candies. And they were getting certain amount of chocolate candies during war, so he used to exchange that for food in the village called Přelovice. But the problem was to bring it back home to Prague as there at Masaryk´s station, where he used to get off, there were German soldiers and if they caught someone with a suitcase full of food, he got sent to concentration camp and sentenced to death. So people were informing each other, whether the stations was guarded, or not, sometimes they were hiding, but sometimes the station officers also gave them a signal and they left their suitcases in the carriages running away barehanded.“

“I remember the assassination, as my mother was in Libeň right then taking the tram no. 14, when the assassination attempt took place and then she told us that there was a man standing at the platform and they heard the bang and shooting as Heydrich was shooting back at them, and the man said: ‚That was Heydrich, I hope they shot him down!‘ He was glad, the man was. And everyone was quite scared, looking at that and one of them, I do not know, whether it was Gabčík, or Kubiš, ran along the tram no. 14 between the gardens. He had a bike next to the fence, which he left behind and never rode it again. They were showing it at the Baťa shop. Mum came back home. In the street there were two policemen living in the same house and she rang the bell and told them: ‚Get ready for emergency.‘ And they wondered: ‚How come?‘ And she said: ‚They´ve just committed an assassination of Heydrich, I saw it from the tram going past.‘ Then they were appealing to everyone, who was on the tram to report, as they wanted a description of the running man, including the details. And mum was afraid, they would talk, as she said everyone she was actually on the tram but no one did and she was never summoned anywhere. So it turned out well.”