"So I said, 'Well, what's going on?' Because I didn't care, so to speak. But when he drove me away like that, I closed and locked the door, and then I opened the half of the big door, so that I had a crack, and I looked at what was happening in Celetná street. I watched with interest to see how many SS men in uniform were there and how many... they were plain-clothes gentlemen and they were all listening. A procession came, nicely lined up, and stop, stop. The boss of the parade came with the papers, how many there were... somehow they handed that to each other. He went round like this, they counted it up, I guess, and the one with the yellow button said, 'Put the bandanas on!' And all the women that were in the parade, they took their hats off or they tied a bandana over their hats. The second command was, 'Bags under the coat!' So everybody who had shopping bags, they tucked them under their coats. And they became the working class, who went to the Old Town Square to cheer."
"Then we listened to the radio and heard that the Germans had signed and that they were gone, and the Russian liberation army were gone too. And that we were waiting for the Americans, who were twenty kilometers or so away... and the Americans hadn't arrived. And then this one arrived, on the ninth... this was all on the eighth, the end of the war, we just took it that there was nothing to talk about, just the end of the war. The ninth one we picked up, we slammed. We didn't even hear the tanks, let me tell you... knocked on Mr. Hrouda's door. He had a two and a half meter high gate, it used to be a blacksmith's shop. That's where they turned the carts. They knocked, we heard that, he was asleep too and he dug himself out, he said the mayor was across the street. So they went a little bit in front of my uncle's house and banged on the wooden gate. My aunt was the first one up, because my uncle was feeding, so he was in the stable. Auntie made breakfast, and after [uncle] fed the horses, the animals, he went to have breakfast. And then he either had a trip with them or something, I don't know. Auntie said, 'Kadli...' She woke up the oldest son and she said, 'Go see what it is!' When he came back, he said it took him a while to be able to tell that there were some green monsters, machines. He didn't know they were Russian tanks. They woke up my dad, I woke up too, then my uncle's eldest daughter went into hiding, and so did my mum. Except my aunt was so forceful, but then when she saw that it was young boys running around those tanks, she brought them a pan of buns. And they were like ecstatic, because then they said, 'Kak u babushka!'"
"For example, I was chased by [the Hitler Youth boys] because they said, 'You have our trousers!' I had short trousers and they said, 'Those are our trousers and you have to take them off,' and I said, 'Well, then, gentlemen, you're wrong.' Even though we didn't like it, we learned German. But then they cut us off at home, that there would be no such jokes. And that was it. And we stopped provoking them [the Hitler Youth boys] again. We knew the place [the streets and alleys around Old Town Square] better than they did. So it didn't matter that I was alone, even though they also knew how to run fast, I ran because it was worth it. Rather than get beat up by them, I ran and zigzagged and I knew I had to run around this corner and they couldn't get me here. Cause I know I can crawl into the basement around that corner. They didn't even get the pants. We weren't afraid of them, but then they found out they needed to have big boys with the little guys. And they were already walking around with a dagger. And we didn't even want to try and see if they could actually rip it off their waist and stab us with one. Or if they just have it because it's part of their costume."
"On the ninth, they were buried on today's Palach Square, where the roads end and the park began, and they had graves dug on the edge of the park. The five boys were piled up like that. And I couldn't look at it for very long. It kept waking me up in my sleep, the girls crying. Cause I figured somehow their nice guy they'd already made plans with would burn to death on the first day of peace. So dad said, 'Let's go!' She got out and the chief said, 'Go straight.' She pointed with the flags and he got in that armored jeep behind the tanks. So this tank 23, 24 with our barrel and behind them rode this chief in this tin, I guess you could sleep in it. But I only saw it once. They didn't show me much."
"How was it with the Old Town Square? So, there were two tanks, one of those tank fighters that was on the side that is the Ministry, and there was an open hatch. So that was the first thing I did. I jumped out. I could afford it at the time because I was jumping with and without a running start and I just enjoyed it. So I didn't have any problem that it was a foot high. I didn't mind that. I jumped up and I was like: And I'm going to get in. I just bent down and the smell that came out of it, and I was like: I don't need that. So maybe that saved my life, because at that moment a lady was running away from Hus and pulling a little child by the hand and shouting, 'Run, they're shooting at us from Týnská street!' Well, so I figured that there were these little side turrets up on the Týnská street and that there really was something like a stick sticking out of that one turret. That it could really be a flinty thing and that it would really shoot. Because that click that I wasn't paying attention to... so I ducked and jumped and ran. There were real Russians already, in front of the Old Town Hall, and they had an anti-aircraft gun and were blasting away. They were snacking, eating, and I came up and I said there's a German up there and he's shooting, and the Russian was staring at me for a while, and then he looked up there, and when he saw the stick sticking out too, he just turned his cannon around, it was a blink, I must say. It exploded, so the whole turret fell down and I went there on Sunday to see what was left of it. But it fell behind the wall that belonged to the church, and only a few bricks fell into that Little Týnská street. No gunman fell there, no flint was there."
Josef Zábranský was born on 8 November 1933 in the Central Bohemian village of Litovice. In 1938, he moved to Prague with his parents and the family acquired an apartment in Celetná Street, not far from Old Town Square. Josef‘s father František Zábranský was a tradesman, running a carriage business and also worked as a beer quality controller for the owner of a brewery in Pavlov near Kladno. The family took refuge with relatives in Pavlov in fear of the air raids in 1943, returning to Prague on 9 May 1945. Josef Zábranský‘s return is connected with several events that became almost symbolic in the context of the liberation of Prague, which he witnessed as a twelve-year-old boy. On his way from Pavlov to Prague, he accompanied the first Soviet tanks with his father; these were tanks with turret markings 1-23 and 1-24. The tanks were severely damaged and the commander of tank 1-24, Guards Lieutenant Ivan Honcharenko (Russian: Goncharenko), was killed. Arriving in Prague‘s Old Town, Josef saw the aftermath of the intense street fighting immediately after it ended. At the same time, he witnessed the last heated moments of the end of the war. Thanks to his place of residence, he witnessed important historical moments in the following months and years. Among other things, he watched the arrival of the government-in-exile from London led by President Edvard Beneš, saw several post-war parades of the Czechoslovak armed forces, and witnessed the events associated with the communist demonstrations in Old Town Square in early 1948. Josef Zábranský graduated from the Business Academy and the Transport Faculty of the University of Economics. He is a widower and raised three daughters. He currently lives (2025) with his family in Mohelnice.
