Olga Šťovíčková

“Under any circumstances, you couldn't listen to foreign radio broadcasts, but my father did it anyway. As on every radio there was this sticker stating: 'Listening to foreign radio is punishable by death.' They would take out short waves or long waves, I can't remember now, they took out one of them, so people couldn't listen to that. But our people were so clever that they managed to bypass that, so my father would go on listening to foreign radios, as they would just put some device inside. At the beginning we would listen to London broadcast, then... As the Germans didn't occupy the whole France back then, they took maybe a half, and the southern part of France wasn't occupied by them. And there was this new radio station, Toulouse Pyrénées was its name. So Toulouse Pyrénées or London it was. But most of the time he would listen to London broadcast.”

“Doctors almost had a fight, as one of them said: 'We will not treat wounded Germans.' And another one said: 'We will treat wounded Germans, as we took the oath'. And the others insisted that such a thing couldn't be and they almost had a fight, but in the end they were taking Germans to the hospital and were treating them as well. As the Germans were quite nearby – there was this secondary school building right across the street where the Germans were. That was where they were shooting from and where they were wounded later, so it was close to the hospital. I know that there was this female doctor who said: 'I will not treat Germans.' But they were telling her off, saying: 'It's a part of an oath you took.' She said: 'I don't mind, I just hate Germans.'

“Even our education was like... I would say... very poor, as we just couldn't study in peace. There was our school principal, who was a constant threat, he was with the Germans, and he threatened us all the time. For example, when we entered school we had to do Nazi salute! Or when he entered the classroom, during a break for example, and once I held this loaf of bread in my right hand so I raised my left arm. And what followed was just terrible, I thought that he would shoot me for that.”

“In hospital, after the fighting started, after there were barricades, you could see them everywhere you looked, there were wounded people everywhere. They were lying on the floor... Hallways full of wounded people. You didn't know whether he was German or Czech, a Vlasov army soldiers or a Red army soldier. We didn't know and back then we just didn't care. And if someone was having an operation and if there was a wound to be dressed, we had to help also. But the worst part was – there were those lists posted on a wall, where all those people were listed. And parents would come to see if their sons were among them. And there was this pair, they found their son – but he lost an arm. That was just horrible – an eighteen years old boy and he lost his right hand.”

“We were just having a lunch when the alarm sounded. There was this terrible wail. So we would all stop eating and we rushed out. It was a beautiful day, it was Easter, the sky was clear. And we were watching how bombs fell on Prague. As you could see that, you could see every single bomb. And we would say: 'Well..' And my aunt would say: 'Oh my...' As she was afraid that something would happen to her son, Mirek, and her husband. And me, I had to go to school, right? We didn't know how we would get to Prague, as trains were constantly under fire. They would fly right above the train and the pilot would be strafing the train by machine gun. And people would jump out and run away. We were afraid to walk using the local road. There was this old man who led us and he told us: 'We will go to Prague, but we won't use the road, we will use trails and pathways. As if they would see us on the road they would mow us down by machine-gun.' So we took this detour. At noon there was this air raid and at 10PM I finally got to Prague.”

“This school of ours... As we were training in the Vinohrady hospital. And the general medicine department was in the highest building back then – five floors and a flat roof. And there were those old fellows and they would say: 'Nurse, go to the roof and take a look, I've got this feeling that there's an alarm going on. Don't you know where they are bombing?' At that time they were bombing Dresden and that was quite a terrible thing. These old fellows said: 'go to the roof, to find out whether you would see the flames, to find out where it is burning, as this isn't just something. This has to be Dresden!' And they were right, and after we went to the roof we saw it by ourselves. For real – there was this glow reaching all the way to the hospital, so we would tell them: 'Well yes, Dresden, they are bombing Dresden!' And the old men were saying: 'Well okay, so the war will be over soon.'”