Bohdan Sekowski

"I was in Bartolomějská, I've already erased it. I was called to Bartolomějská, there they asked me such stupid questions, now I can say it at the top of my lungs, I was thinking: You're so stupid! They asked me all kinds of stupid questions. They asked me about my brother - if we corresponded and had contact through someone. I was there for hours. Apparently they gave up, realized they weren't going to get anything out of me, and didn't call me again. I was there for about four hours."

"Living with the Germans was an ordeal for us, we had only Germans around us. Somehow we survived, because we eventually lived to see the revolution. I built barricades with my father on Letná Street out of torn paving stones. The trams didn't run, we built barricades in Veverkova Street and Belcredi Street, then called Letenská Street. There were barricades everywhere. I remember that the Germans who didn't escape and stayed there were very arrogant, they didn't want to accept that Germany had lost. They hid in their attics or in their apartments wherever they could. When we built barricades, they even shot at us from the dormers of the opposite houses. And as they fired, the people who were building the barricades scattered. My neighbour, who had a paving stone in his hand, dropped it during the shooting. And he dropped it so that it fell on my finger and I got a huge bug. And I didn't care that they were shooting, but I was holding my hand because it was a terrible pain. Only then did I run away. The memories are manifold. Right up to that solemn moment when we cleared the barricades so the tanks could come through."

"My brother, when it was still possible... He was employed by the English Embassy here in Prague as a chauffeur. And he used to go to Munich as a truck driver, because the English Embassy used to import everything. They needed to paint the windows, they had to bring paint. They had to bring in food, everything. They didn't buy anything here, they imported everything. They needed a delivery truck to get around. My brother was their truck driver. He went to Munich, had a load ready, loaded it and drove it here. He did that for a year, two years, I don't remember. Of course, it didn't suit him here. One day he went to Munich again, loaded the truck, and at their office in Munich he said, 'Gentlemen, I'm staying here. I quit. Find a driver to take it back. I'm finished, I'm leaving.' He said goodbye to them, they couldn't do anything. Then he started to hang around in Germany, in different places, seeing what kind of work he could get, until finally he settled in Ulm. Then he started doing similar work to what I was doing here."

"Back then, we used to joke as boys when we saw a guy with a haircut. We'd say, 'Hey, a German!' And we'd say it out loud. They didn't realise that we knew them by their haircut. There were just allusions and jokes like that. But absolutely within certain limits. That's how life was lived, but I'll tell you, it wasn't life, especially for our parents."

"I was six years old in Poland when I started school there. I had to. So I started first grade in Zakopane, but I didn't finish. Of course, my mother and I moved here. Even the move was such that my mother had two children and two suitcases. It was necessary to get to Ostrava at least, because the situation on the border between the Czech Republic and Poland was not so rosy at that time. Poland was making claims on Silesia, it was tricky. A train journey from Zakopane to Ostrava was out of the question. So my mother partly walked with us, partly someone took her on a ladder truck when he felt sorry for her for taking all this. That's how she got to the border and to Ostrava. It was possible to cross the border, she was Czech, so it was possible."