Růžena Šťastná

"The worst was the Looting Guard (Revolutionary Guard). It was! We lived at the bottom of the hill going to Skorotice. We saw them coming in their cars, wearing those RG armbands, and they loaded up their cars and drove off. They didn't help the Republic with anything, like working, no. They took everything, laundry, dishes, glasses, in short, everything that was in the apartment, they took it. They took it home or sold it somewhere. In the morning they loaded it up and left in the evening. I saw most of them right after the war, before we were thrown out, before the displacement. Right after the war."

"A lot of them were riding horses and driving a herd of cows in front of them. They were screaming in pain because nobody had milked them, they must have had them for meat. I'll never forget the roaring of the cows and the roaring of the people as the cows ran among them. The herd of cows stopped right in front of our house. That was May, the end of the war. We had a double loft in our house. So on the second one we were all women hiding. We were very warm, we were thirsty and the whole house was full of soldiers. They cooked there and we spent five days in that attic. They came and they were everywhere in the house, in the apartments like at home."

"That school of ours, as it is now a museum, it took a hit. But we weren't in school then. Next door was the main post office, and that took a full hit too. Then also the library on Lidice Square and the whole Revoluční Street. They said they wanted to bomb the runway, but they miscalculated and took it up the street. Under Větruše the whole district was also destroyed."

"When there were air raids, we used to go to what is now Centropol, that was then Oděvy (Clothing). We used to go down the whole school to the shelter. My friend and I always escaped and we walked through Klíš, through the forest to Skorotice. One time we were too scared. A plane was flying low and dropping some boxes. We lay down and thought it was the end of us. The end of the war wasn't pretty. And during the air raids on Dresden, we stood in the courtyard in Skorotice. There was fire all around, red sky, it was terrible. All the inhabitants of Skorotice stood outside and looked at the red sky and you could hear it."