Jana Honomichlová

"In the fifty-third year, I remember - my dad didn't want to talk about it too much - but that there was a demonstration in Masaryk Square, that he went there to see it with his colleagues, that things were starting to turn out badly, so he left. The only thing I remember is that afterwards such actions were announced so that the intellectuals would go to help the workers at the Škoda factory. Dad was assigned somewhere in Škoda, I don't know where. The only thing that saved him - because they were taking some badly secured bars somewhere by crane and those fell on his leg, so he had all his toes broken. That rescued him from having to work at Škoda as a labourer."

"Well, it was actually my mother's aunt, her son completed his apprenticeship at the Baťa [company] and was sent to Trinidad to represent the company there. And when the war broke out he left that country and joined the RAF, then as a lieutenant he was deployed on some secret mission to Italy and unfortunately the plane hit rocks in the fog and the plane crashed. He was about 27, my aunt had a mental breakdown at the time and she had mental problems all her life because he was her only son. And she died pretty soon, sometime after the year 1950."