Eugenie Číhalová

“At that time there were no laws protecting those animals, there was no such thing as animal cruelty laws. At that time they would experiment on dogs mostly. And they would get the dogs as every Friday a covered van would come with a Hungarian or Slovak plate; they would open the door and dogs of all races would rush into the kennel. And they would spend a week in quarantine and then they would be used for experiments. And at the time I have been working on kidney transplantation and conservation. And we were trying several conversation solutions so the kidney could be preserved before it was being transplanted to a recipient.”

“When they were deciding whether we should move out, they just could not decide. Then they stated the date: 'On this day you are moving out.' And we liked it as we didn´t have to go to school. So we would stand... Two Holan moving company cars came. They were waiting outside and people were eager to see what's going to happen. And we stood outside, since we were not allowed to go to upstairs to our flat. So the people who were not at work would stand there next to us waiting what´s going to happen. And they started to move our stuff, they would carry it out and pile it. And I have to say that they were quite careful as they could just throw it on the ground. After they carried out quite a lot of our stuff my mother said that there is a cabinet, my father´s file cabinet. And my brother said that he wouldn´t go without the file cabinet, that he wouldn´t move out without it. As we would play when our father used to file the materials for the insurance company, my brother would occupy the cabinet and he loved to play with the shutter. It would distract father but my brother could do anything that came into his mind. So he said that he would not go without the cabinet... And he was screaming that he needed it. But in the cabinet, there was still my father´s patient record archive as my mother locked it all up. And they couldn´t... They were not able to move it. So in the end they would... As we stood there with my mother and the residents and all the passerby they would move the cabinet out of the window. They just moved it out and it would smash, all the papers would fly in all directions and my brother would start to roar as a tiger as... Not because of the papers but because of that cabinet of his. And I remember that my mother, as we stood next to her and my brother screamed like mad, she would grab me as if she wanted to pierce my shoulder, and she has to grab my brother also as he stopped to scream suddenly, and my mother would say, 'Silence, not a single tear!'