Harald Skala

"I finally got the uniform - a brown shirt, black shorts, a belt and a dagger. I was very proud of it." - "What was on the belt? Was there any writing on it?" - "I don't know, I guess. I folded everything up nicely in the chimney on my nightstand and waited for my father to come. I wanted to show him off. My father always came to me when he came home from work and we talked for a while. He came over and saw the folded uniform, looked at it, sat down next to me and didn't say anything at first. And then I saw that he started to shed tears. I asked him what was wrong. He didn't say a word, got up and left without a word. I remember that to this day, I didn't understand at the time. I was proud of it, a beautiful uniform for free. But I only understood later what it was all about."

"One day I was looking out of the window and I saw two Russian soldiers coming out of the house across the street with a radio in their hands. And I recognized the radio - it was the radio of the family that had the five boys. They put the radio on the sidewalk and started turning knobs, but the radio wasn't playing. So this one guy took a machine gun and shot the radio. At that moment, a Russian officer appeared. I was just watching that there was some kind of a discussion, a conversation. Suddenly the officer pulled out his gun and shot the soldier. I almost fell out of the window. I got sick, I ran to my mother in the kitchen, I said, 'Mom, Mom, he shot him.' The other soldier must have put him away, I didn't see him again after that."

"I applied, went to Chrudim, passed the exams. I was one of the best. I was convinced that in September I would go to Chrudim and enter the industrial school. Then sometime in the summer, in July, a letter came from the Ministry of Education. My parents opened it, and at first I didn't know what it was. Then my father disappeared, he didn't speak to us for several days. And then it came out that I wasn't admitted to the school, that I had been rejected. No reason given. My father then went to the Ministry of Culture in Prague, where the letter was addressed. He came back, nothing came out. My mother told me later that I was rejected because she was a Sudeten German and my father was a former civil servant, we lived in Jihlava and I went to a German school."

"One day we were up at the hut on Suchy vrch (in the Orlicke hory). We went there for lunch and there were a lot of people there. All the tables were occupied, but there were only two Soviet officers sitting at one of them, and two seats were still vacant. So we sat down with them, because nobody wanted to sit there. My father knew a little Russian at that time and the two of them started to talk to him somehow. They had ordered vodka, I think, and they wanted to make a toast. They ordered one vodka for my father too. My father never drank, but he didn't dare refuse. He held the vodka glass in his hand, the two of them stood up, picked up the vodka glass and both shouted, 'For a free Lithuania!' It was the Lithuanians, and at that moment everyone around started clapping. Very quickly, everyone became terribly drunk. I remember we backed out because my father didn't want to drink. What happened after that, I don't know."