Vladimír Zikan

"First impression… I came there through the Catholic organization; the sponsors were Catholics (and I'm not a Catholic). Two ladies were waiting for me from that ship - hats like that! It was a Packard car, they are not made anymore - with a driver. They took me and drove me to the station, they gave me money and a ticket. I said: 'Oh well, if this’s America!' The first thing I bought were Lucky Strike cigarettes, I put them in my pocket. But it was July, Louisiana, it's subtropical, it's awfully humid on the Mississippi River, it's like a laundry room. Then, I said, 'Now to Chicago, and all the way up, what a journey!' But the train was air-conditioned. What would have I thought that any trains are air conditioned! So, I lit a cigar by the window and said, 'Vladimir, you're going now!'"

"And how did the interrogation go with the CIC? It was a secret service…" - "Very well. A box of cigarettes and coffee and chocolate. Very friendly. But he said, 'I want to know everything from the time you were born to the time you walked into this office.' They knew more than I did." - "Did they know about your life?" - "They knew more. I didn't hide anything, but sometimes he said: 'What about that?' So, I realized... or I thought it wasn't important to talk about it. But they knew more than I knew."

"Jindra had a friend there, she was a Sudeten German, but she was not expelled. She went with her mother and they were watching, they knew when the guards were marching there. They arranged it all in German, and I back then - even though I spoke quite good German - but I just heard 'um acht Uhr' and 'Wasser', so I knew 'at eight o'clock' and that there was water. But the water, it was supposed to be, that it would only reach our ankles, and it probably sent us to... or we went somewhere else - and I went into a water hole all the way to the waist, in November! The handle of my suitcase tore off because it was a paper suitcase. Well, that´s how we moved to the Russian zone."