Jiří Matulák

"Please, listen, the men took these hunting rifles and they went to defend the republic, and here, what's it called, with the air strip, Vodochody, and when you're driving up from Klíčany then on the right side there's a forest. It's there even today. And the Germans, those were frontliners, they caught those men, had them kneel in the ditch and they shot them, some three or four of them there. But there was a younger one, and he ran almost up to the forest, they let him get some excersise, then they shot him. Now look, two Russians drove in a bike with sidecar, but a German one, and they just shot all the Germans."

"Even our neighbour told on father, that he listened to London. And because they made this stupid signature, this bububu bum, bububu bum, this drumming, right, and it repeated several times, and our neighbour heard it and told on father, that he listened to London."

"It was like this. Now the Czechs were getting even with the Germans... I didn't like that either. Because those Germans weren't actually responsible for anything. They had to go to war. They were soldiers. And here apparently if someone wanted to have a shot, then no problem. Can you imagine that?" "So you witnessed some attacks on Germans after the war?" "Of course!" "Could you describe what you saw exactly?" "Well, they had them on this training pitch, had them running in circles, and if someone wanted to have a shot, then he had a shot." "Where was that?" "Well, in Kralupy." "How many Germans did you see them shoot while you were there?" "I saw one. I don't like that stuff..."

"So we went straight to Dejvice and we got to the river, to the Barricade Bridge, and we stayed there for four days and... I mean I didn't really understand things, I was seventeen, and when you look at your seventeen-year-olds, what they understood, nothing, nothing, not even... that there were shots being fired there, that yes, and also I saw that the so-called captain on the Barricade Bridge changed his dress three times a day. When it was bad, he ran off and came back after a while as a civillian, and when he saw that it had calmed down a bit, then straight away he got out his uniform and again he was, you know..." "And he had a Czech Army uniform from before the war?" "Yes, yes, yes." "That's what you saw on the Barricade Bridge, he changed according to the situation. Did he try to give people orders or something...?" "No, no, no..."