Věra Vašků

"My mother was so, I don't want to say curious, but she had to be there for everything. Jitka was still in the pram, we each kept to one side and [went] into town. It was mostly Russians with tanks coming to Prague. Then [I remember] how they punished the collaborators there. As they drove them out, everyone had a rope around their necks. The thing that sticks in my mind the most is how they herded these collaborators into the stream. It was the beginning of May. It was cold. And they had to lie down in the water. Then a bus came at them and they had to wash it from underneath. They were lying on their backs in the cold water. They had some black clothes and a swastika on their back. I felt sorry for them. It stayed with me as a great injustice that a man would do this to a man just for his beliefs."

"I don't know if I told you that my mother just sent me to my aunt's with a letter. When I got there, my cousin was looking out of the window and said, 'Věra, come quickly, there are soldiers on the railway bank and they are shooting.' I ran there and quickly slammed the door shut. My aunt called downstairs: 'In the cellar, in the cellar!' We were stuffed into a small cellar, where we survived the shooting. In this book I have just got from Říčany, they describe everything. Namely, who fought there. We used to walk past their memorial for years. We lived there. There were names that I still remember - Freiwillige and so on. I can't remember them all now. The memorial is still there. They were in charge of making sure that the armoured train coming from Benečov would not get to Prague - they were Germans. And they would help to shoot... I know that with one boy we climbed up. We called it "peshunk", because it was the bank where the train was going along. They'd run up the top and down, and they'd shoot at them there. And they succeeded in that the train didn't come."