Věra Beránková

"UNRRA was here too, helping Europe in general. Those were packages that were left over from army supplies. In Prague, there were packages the size of a brick, in heavily waxed carton. Inside there was, for example, a tin of ham and eggs, that was everybody's favourite. Or sardines, my mother loved that. Then some biscuits. A kind of purple powder that was put in the water, it was supposed to sanitise and flavour it at the same time. And then there was a bar of chocolate that I couldn't wait to get. It was like Snickers and Mars bars today. My relatives in East Bohemia used to get round cans, biscuits also, and similar stuff. For sweets, there were little bags of coloured candies that looked just like today's M+Ms. They had chocolate on the inside and a coloured coating. I loved those, too."

"I came home and was horrified. Armoured carriers were driving down our street, Russian soldiers sitting on top with their rifles ready, pointing at the rooftops to see if anyone would fire at them. I had a newborn baby at home, and that scared me. I thought, 'I could run with this little one, but with the infant...?' But nothing was happening. It was likely the foreigners visiting on holiday who were the most scared. There was a car with Austrians and they couldn't drive because there were tanks everywhere - it was hard to drive through. Then one Sunday we finally went for a walk to the Homole hill in the back, and the Russians were camping there. We asked in Russian what they were doing there, that there was no checkpoint. They told us that we had no meat and that they were checking it. We were being fooled terribly. They were nice to us, [we] were standing there with the stroller and a baby, and their truck was approaching without us noticing. They hurriedly shifted us out of the way and helped us with the stroller so we wouldn't get hit. We also made these banners, as was common, that said in Russian: 'Ivan, go home, Natasha is waiting for you!' Those used to be put on the flagpoles where they would drive, in Russian. People tried to make various jokes. For example, the direction signs were messed so they would lose their way. Railway workers heard a Russian jammer was coming in because the radio was still broadcasting against them, and so they took the jammer to a siding. People tried to make fun."

"Daddy was a barricade fighter. There was a barricade of paving bricks in front of the next door house, I think they even put one tram car on top, empty. I'm not sure if he was there though. I know he was in Malešice. He said he was running around a chapel when a plane targeted him and allegedly fired at him but he hid behind the chapel. Then they were on a railway embankment and there was a boy with him. He told the boy, 'Don't lift your head.' I guess the train was carrying German soldiers, and Daddy was crouched down, pinned to the ground, but the boy raised his head and got shot."

"Around 8 May we went to sleep in the apartment, and when I woke up in the morning, my mother was bending over me: 'Věruška, it's peace now, the Russians have arrived.' It was really such a lovely, happy moment. Then during the day we would see cars, or rather trucks, full of Russian soldiers in the streets, and they would come and visit us during the day. I know that my dad, actually probably the only one in the immediate area, knew Russian, so he spoke to them, and from then I remember my first Russian word: 'khorosho'. The soldiers shocked me; they brought their own food, behaved very well, and slept in the Krč forest, but they came to our families here during the day. What shocked me was seeing them with wine in buckets, probably ours; crunching onions like apples, I don't know if they were peeled; and eating smoked tongues, probably beef."