Jana Černá

„We were happy, all of us, that the war is over, and the next day, it had to be the 10th, I saw Kája happily sitting on a tank in the Průběžná Street, they lived near the Průběžná St., he was among the soldiers. Then he came running home and said that he got a slice of bread with meat, that’s what grandma remembered. The weather was lovely those days and Kája would be at home at six every evening. And nobody would make him go out later. It was weird when he didn’t come until half past seven but it was undersrtandable. We thought he was somewhere with the soldiers but when he was not at home by eight, we went to look for him, we called, we searched until late but Karel was nowhere to be found. I had a bad feeling but I also hoped that he would return, that he would come back. We did not sleep that night at all and in the morning, we went to look for him again. In the afternoon, we found out that in Průběžná, an army car ran over a boy, and then we found his suspender with a name tag and then we knew that Kája was not any more. That was the second and even sadder day in my life. We found out that he was treated around seven in the evening in the Strašnice school. He was tossed aside by a Russian car and he broke his neck. He got some injection and died in half an hour. They took him to the Vinohrady hospital where dad, grandma’s husband, saw him. After the revolution, there were many dead and there was not enough space for burials and people to bury them. The dead were laid into common graves but we managed to get a spot in the Vinohrady cemetery and we dug the grave ourselves. It was so sad and so difficult… Jeník, the oldest son, helped dad with the digging. There was a shortage of coffins, too, children were buried in large boxes or only wrapped in a shroud. We bough a coffin far away at the Staroměstské Square, it was exhibited in the shop window as a sample. It was a nice coffin in oak. The burial mass took place in the St. Wenceslas chapel in Vinohrady at the Vinohrady cemetery on the 15th of May in 1945 at half past nine in the morning.”