Dagmar Hazdrová

“Every normal psychologists and psychiatrists say that a person must logically fear for their life. We didn’t have time for that. I swear that we weren’t afraid. The fear came later, in January, when I was serving in Prague and Dubček fell. We received reports to the radio station in Vinohrady from all sides that an armoured train was coming at us, that it was already past Mochov, that it was equipped with cannons. That it looks like it will attack the radio building. Doctor Čestmír Suchý, who didn’t work in his position any more but was operating the foreign broadcast teleprinter, said: ‘We’ll switch off the teleprinter, we’ll switch off the telephones.’ We pulled down the security bars. We secured the bars with a chain and switched off the lights. But I was still afraid because I was thinking of my children.”

“There was one period when he was away from home for a long time. At the time the Germans came to search our house. I knew that at the beginning of the war they had taken down some ancient teaching aids – stuffed birds that had long been in storage so they wouldn’t be thrown out. They took them down and put secret notes, instructions into their beaks or various crevices. I knew they were there even though my parents didn’t. The Germans tried to lure me somehow into telling them where Dad was. I didn’t know where. I told them he was visiting my auntie, his sister. They gave me chocolate. What visitors did we have? You wouldn’t believe how a nine-year-old child can suddenly grow up. I knew I mustn’t tell anything at all.”