Jan Čihák

"Well, it was interesting there, too. There were still shootings. The Rohols, or as they were called at the time, walked across the border at night and returned to their houses, they just had something buried there or they just came for something, so there were many shootings. The Russians guarded the border, the Russian soldiers. I was also there – I was simply there - well, in Loučky, it was normally a short distance from it, a short distance from the border. There. I also experienced that a German, a German boy who had not yet been pushed away, he normally pushed me into… he was pointing to… he spoke German to me, I didn't understand anything, that's clear, and there was such a small pond. There were birch trees growing around it. I won't forget it. There were prams in that pond, the ones with the big wheels, as before… yeah… well, and now he kept pointing at it, I leaned in, he pushed into me and he threw me there. And he ran away. And I just, I was about six years old, I just… I could not swim, nothing. Since then I always had my eyes open in the water. Eyes open, I looked at the stroller wheels. Then I turned and saw the roots of the birches in the water, so I climbed up on those roots and I pulled myself out of the water. And then I collapsed there, I just collapsed... My parents were already looking for me, so they found me, and I was… I was sick for at least a week. Just completely shocked, I don't know what was wrong to me back then."

"I saw dead people lying on the street, and what struck me most was when I saw a boy about fourteen or fifteen years old tied to a lamppost. He was a member of the Hitler Youth, in that uniform, in those shorts, in that green shirt or whatever it was. How they found him, they poured gasoline on him and set him on fire. So, I saw him shouting more than usual... just like he was getting burned. So, it was so madly etched in my memory that I couldn't get rid of it. I see it… I see it as if I were there now. Well, and then they told me they did it because he shot about four people from a window. He shot four of our people who were just in the uprising. So, they pulled him out of the apartment - they just didn't really care much, they just tied him up there, poured the gasoline on him and set him on fire."