Petr Dujka

"One shooting was likely our fault. They fired in the morning; that wasn't our fault. I didn't know what a bullet could do. It can bounce off the ceiling into the walls and off the walls into the parquets. After we had walked through that night, the next day we saw the door shot through and we said, it's not safe anywhere here, we'll have to go to the bathroom next time. We found a place to stay when they fire again. I was at one of my classmates' place next door, and we just stupidly... again, that's our life unfolding. We flashed a light bulb three times. This was on the right bank of the Vltava, and on the other side... of course there were Russians there too... a shot was fired. At first, it was like 'tatatata'. Then it began. They started firing, all guns blazing. Not that they shot the house to bits, but the bullets hit the apartments in a terrible way. Of course, it went to our apartment too, but I was at my friend's place at the time, and we never made that kind of joke on the nights to come."

"He said little about the war, about the passage to the eastern front, about the Czechoslovak corps, or about the Slovak National Uprising, but occasionally he dropped something. I will tell you something. When they were crossing the Váh during the uprising, they were led by a man who was a Nazi collaborator and had alerted the Nazis. At once, the Nazis started firing at them from both sides. They had no choice but to jump into the Váh. The river was not too deep. They swam in places and waded sometimes. Many of them were shot by the Germans while still in the water. They hid in a nearby grove. The Germans didn't suspect they could be so close and they looked everywhere else. There were armored cars driving around, soldiers marching, and they always lined up behind the grove. They were there for four days in the freezing cold, in the snow, without food, burying themselves in the snow, of course, and somehow they just survived."

"When Eliáš formed his government, my grandfather Mikuláš was given other tasks in the resistance as well. He chaired the golf club at Říčka. That's where intel went to London. He also made sure some food supplies from Bohemia did not make it to the front line. He made sure they stayed here for those making weapons for the front. We didn't know much, but we knew his wife Margaretha Hansy grew up with a friend who went on to marry Neurath, the first Reich Protector. When someone needed help, like they were in prison, my grandparents made sure to make a mention at the right places. They were often released from prison."