Ladislava Kyptová

"I remember my grandmother saying, 'For Christ's sake, the Russians are here!' She prayed and crossed herself. We used to pray in a storage pit all the time, and then we started again. They came in and grandma and mum said they were nice. They had a little boy with them, said he was like ten years old, and he wore their uniform. These kids were called the 'sling boys', as per the Hussite forces. I came to Senica, and there was a man lying in bed with big boots on. I wondered where the father had got him, and I tried to wake him up. He didn't have a hat, so I didn't think was a soldier; he was wearing a coat. Grandma said, "For God's sake, leave him alone, he's Russian!"

"We all had to be interviewed. I worked here in Jílové in Směr as a secretary to the director. And they all had to. They asked the question if we agree to the entry of troops to us. They asked almost nothing else, only this. And I told them that I think it could have been handled diplomatically, that they didn't have to come here because it could have been handled that way. And then I cried because my dad just died and they told me I could leave. But I remember that when our acquaintances used to come to our place, we used to have such meetings, so everyone had a lot of talk that they wouldn't say that they agreed. And when we got together, everyone said that he had to say it. Everyone had to say. So I said, 'Well, you see, you've all been arguing here, how can you say you don't agree. In the end, you were all afraid. I said that I think it could have been resolved diplomatically. And they gave me peace.' And they (members of the vetting commission) told me, 'But comrade, after all, it was no longer possible to go through the diplomatic route, there was already a counter-revolution here!'"

"Oh yes, they made attempts. And so I told my dad, and he said, 'Look, don't go anywhere. Say that you want to work in the Youth Union and that you don't feel like it yet.' So I said it and I repeated it several times and they gave me a break. And then at work, when I was, then again. And I was about nineteen... No, I was over twenty. And I was saying, 'Look, they stopped me here in the corridor and they want me to go to the side.' I was saying that to my friend. And she was saying - she was already in the party because she was seven years older - and she was saying 'Don't go anywhere! I got in there without knowing...Look, I have to go to every brigade, I have to go everywhere...Don't you go anywhere!' And I said, 'They already called me that in the village and my dad gave me this advice.'' Then say it anyway! ' So I said the same, and they gave me a break from then on."

"I experienced (the Psáry massacre) as a small child. When rumor came from Psáry that a German had been shot there, the Germans stopped and went around all the houses in the village. And wherever they found a man, they shot them all. Those from the edge of the village, who learned that they were shooting, so some people saved themselves in the fields. And here in Libeř, they made jams for the Germans, that is, they cut down trees across the road above the bends. And when they learned what they were doing in Psáry, the male worked at night, they hurriedly removed the jams again. So that they wouldn't stop here and do the same thing they did in Psáry... My classmate lost his father like that."