Božena Kubicová

"Jiří arrived, my husband that is, completely terrified. He says, 'The Russians are occupying us.' Well, it seemed strange to me why the Russians would occupy us. He says, 'Come on, we have to go to the city, that's where they're happening, that's where the history is, we have to be there, there must be something going on there.' So we hurried to the city, and there, at the train station in Old Brno, Russian tanks were driving by, and people started sitting down in front of them. So, of course, we sat down in front of the tanks. I, watching it now, I was convinced that the people driving the tanks were not going to run into the people. How naive I was, right? Well, but they didn't, that's why I'm here. But it was a strange feeling, beautiful in a way, the cohesion of the people. It was completely, there were people, everybody who just stumbled in there, sat down, there was a carpet of people sitting down, and apparently, the soldiers in those tanks probably didn't know what was going on at all. Well luckily it turned out well, for us, that we're alive, but it was terrible. It was terrible."

"But what I experienced, and what actually influenced my whole life, was that the word got out in Mělník and Rousovice that we should go to the main road that leads to Prague and we should go to welcome the American soldiers who were coming to help Prague. So all of us, perhaps there was no one left at home, went to the road and we were almost there when I realized that I had forgotten my flags. So my mother said, 'I'll wait for you here and run back home to get the flags.' So I ran, and when I was about a third of the way from my mother, I heard planes. I knew the sound; they had this dark sound. I looked up and they were flying so slowly, and I saw some things falling. Then a gentleman came up to me and pulled me to the ground. Into the dirt, into the street, and there was his lady lying next to him. And now there was horror, people screaming, running, crying, lying on the ground. I couldn't explain what was happening. It was terrible, and the man held me so tightly that I couldn't. Only then did he start to talk about whether they should go hide too and not lie on the road. I felt him loosen up a bit in the way he was holding me, so I jerked away from him and ran off again towards our home. Only there wasn't a soul there anymore; they were all hiding. It was so stressful, I ran to the door and it was locked. You can't imagine the horror of not being able to get in. So I was banging on the door and again a gentleman came running and grabbed me and literally dragged me because I was struggling. I couldn't explain what was going on. There was a little shop on the other side of the street, so he dragged me there, it was packed with people. I was small, right, so many people, I couldn't breathe. Those were the horrors I experienced. So suddenly somebody shouted, I won't put it that way, 'Mummy's running'. Well, when my mother saw what was happening, she naturally ran after me. But that still wasn't all. About the next day, or one more day, there was a terrible thunderstorm. And the thunder reminded me of those bomb explosions. So I was having hysterical fits of crying and everything. As soon as I heard thunder somewhere, I just... It all came back to me, the whole air raid and that. Daddy kept explaining it to me, that I shouldn't be afraid of it, that I should be afraid of the lightning. No, it was just inside me, the terror of the air raid, so I kept crying. Then I cried also because my dad was angry that he was telling me that and I kept crying and crying and crying, desperately. But then he chose a different tactic. Slowly he began to explain to me that I should learn not to be afraid. And if I was ever going to be afraid, I had to learn to overcome that fear. That no one needs to know I'm afraid. And so what convinced me was that Daddy said, 'You know, I've been scared in my life, too. Everybody gets in a situation that they're afraid, but you have to be able to overcome it.' So that's the most valuable thing that my daddy gave me in my life, because it helped me a lot, in my whole life."