Ing. Jiří Schmied

“The situation in the ‘Little Fortress’ was different from the liberation in the rest of Czechoslovakia. It was taken over on May 4 by the International Red Cross. It was people from Switzerland, Sweden and the like. It was doctors inspecting the inmates for typhus or spotted fever. Since the New Year, the Germans were releasing people who committed some minor offence and were not really important. They released about twenty of them a month. These people were usually sick and they were treated by the International Red Cross that knew the situation and that came there on that 4 May. It happened on a Friday afternoon. They were giving us shots against typhus. On Saturday at 11 o’ clock, they opened the doors to our cells and we were free. The SS-men started to leave the prison at two o’ clock in the afternoon. We could move around the prison freely. In the forth prison yard, there lay five thousand typhus-infected inmates. They used to carry potatoes from the prison vaults to the kitchen. Since they shut down the fourth yard, we were bringing the potatoes to the kitchen.”

“My dad was in the Pankrác prison. He got sick and had to be treated at the prison hospital. On the day of his release, my mom went to Prague to meet him in front of the prison. She waited in front of the prison and after he was set free, they walked together through Prague to Dejvice where the Canadian embassy is located today. A crowd of armed people was erecting barricades there in order to hinder the Germans from entering the city. My parents couldn’t get farther so they stayed there. They helped the fighters with preparing the food. They only got home on 9 May. They came on foot from Prague. When they came to Brandýsek, Soviet soldiers stopped them. My dad explained to one of the soldiers that he had been imprisoned by the Germans in Prague and that he’s now on his way home. The Soviet soldier clapped him on the back and said that everything’s going to be alright now. He also gave him a meat can that was a German production. They walked through Brandýsek and at the other end of Brandýsek stood another Soviet patrol. They asked them who they are and where they are going. They then checked their bags and found the German meat can in it. The Soviet soldier said: ‘it’s in German - you are a German!’ and he wanted to shoot my dad. It took my dad a while before he was able to explain to the soldier that he wasn’t German and that he got the meat can from his comrade-in-arms down the road. My dad could have died there. So that’s how they got home.”