Erna Podhorská

"I can still see it in front of my eyes, we were in Sokolovna and suddenly the town radio announced that the war was over. And we were coming out of the building, it was about Friday, and we all flew to the school on the square. There were a bunch of us, about twenty kids, and we ran, and we thought that the war was over, and we thought that the German soldiers were no longer there. But maybe the German soldiers were also happy that the war was over, because they ran out in all sorts of costumes, some in military suits, some just in their shorts, but we all slowly hugged each other in that square, saying that the war was over, even with the Germans. And when we got home, my mother was angry that they could have attacked us. We were crazy children who suffered terribly from the war. And now it was over, and we were so happy. It was a beautiful day."

"A big truck came, and imagine that everything that was in the store, the goods that were on our shelves, they took everything. They even dared to go through the door into our room and picking out of the cupboards what mom, when it was our birthday or Christmas, nobody bought presents, but we were given, for example, a bath towel or towels or nice dish towels, and mom said that's what we had for our trousseau, and they even went into that apartment and opened the cupboards and picked out all these goods our mother stored for us. Then in Mr. Ševčík's shop, there were three textile shops in Přelouč - the Svobodas, the Dejmals and Ševčík - and they put all these things in the Ševčíks' window. They showed us what we had hidden away, and someone wrote on the window: 'It's my daughter who has better trousseau!' They showed it as concealed goods. I don't know what happened at that time, because my parents had a good relationship with people, God forbid they were mean to anyone or spoke badly. They were always good people. And so communism robbed us pretty badly."