Alena Pavlová

“On August 20th 1968, I was going to the bus stop to go to work as usual, and suddenly there were (Russian) tanks and airplanes, and one tank was turned upside down and one soldier died there. The place is called Staré Místo, between Jičín and Libáň. As the tank turned over, they were not able to pull him out. And for the following two days we were passing by that tank on my way to work, and of course, that guy was screaming there. It was terrible.”

“I grabbed Boženka’s hand and we did not run into the basement, but into the house instead. When we reached our house, bombs began falling – to me as an eight-year-old, they looked like flaming arrows. My mom exclaimed: ‘God be with us and all the evil go away! Children, let’s go inside.’ We remained within the door posts, which were quite robust, and there was a huge crater in the front part of the house where the bomb dropped, and the other bomb was in the rear side by the brook. The house thus exploded while we were with mom under those door posts.”