"The American army, unlike the Soviet army, was completely different. I could have compared it pretty well, because I've seen both soviet soldiers and American soldiers. It was a diametric difference. American soldiers were elegant, cleanly dressed with ironed pucks. In Golčův Jeníkov and the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands we first saw Soviet soldiers. Well, they were filthy poor bastards. He had, poor thing, felt rollers up to his knees, and here he was treading on his own foot. It’s been through so much already, that felt. There were still cold mornings, so he was glad to have the rollers like this."
"When my mother and I came here [to Marianske Lazne] in August 1945, my father got tickets to the variety show that the Americans had in the current city theatre. We were invited to it, so we went. My mother was already very angry with me because I was always facing back and I kept turning to the audience behind me. Mommy couldn't understand why I was doing this. She was just upset, so she gave me a nudge and said, 'Please, what are you doing? You keep turning around. That's indecency. What you see or who you're looking for, my father and I are all here.' Then I told her the holy truth. I was fascinated by the sight when I turned around. The audience behind me was American soldiers, and they were all chewing. And I couldn't understand why. They had their mouths shut. And they were chewing gum. We weren't used to it at the time, but the Americans chewed on it “imrvére”, as they say, all the time."
"One day I was near the railway station in Golčův Jeníkov with a friend. All of a sudden I'm looking, he [the fighter pilot] flew low and he had the window open, and I said, 'Mařenko, look, he's black and he's laughing at us!' He was flying very low. This is the first time I've ever seen a black man. We waved to him."
Anna Poláková was born in 1933 in southern Slovakia. Her father worked there as a Czechoslovak gendarme. Her parents wanted the children to have a Czech education, so he had himself transferred to Mladé Buky near Trutnov. However, due to mobilisation in 1938, they moved to Kutna Hora, where the family came from. However, they lived here for a short time because their father was transferred to nearby Golčův Jeníkov. There they experienced liberation by the Red Army. After the end of the war, it was necessary to fill the state offices in the borderlands. The father chose Marianske Lazne as his new place of work. Anna entered the grammar school here and after its abolition, she graduated from the grammar school in Planá. Twice she unsuccessfully applied to study paediatrics. Thanks to her experience in the dental laboratory, she eventually managed to study dentistry at university and after graduation, she returned to Marianske Lazne, where she lives to this day..
