Marie Strnadová

"So we were looking for a job with an apartment, and it was nowhere to be found. For example, in one factory in Nové Město they were very happy to say that they needed a cleaner and a heating engineer and that [the job] came with an apartment. And that they were happy that we were interested. So we wrote it down, signed that we would start. A fortnight later we got a letter saying that it wasn't valid, that they had filled the position with their staff. We just didn't have a chance to get a foothold anywhere. They always wanted from the Communist Party or from the employer, they wanted [to know] why he left. And they wrote them that they were not allowed to employ him. We couldn't find a place with an apartment in the whole Hradec Kralove region. Only after that my brother Malecek, a veterinarian doctor, helped us that we were taken to a cow farm with housing. Every day we got up at 3:30, drove at four o'clock to be in the cowshed."

"I was thirteen years old then, but I was all legs, arms like a stick, terribly thin. And so they wouldn't notice me, that's why they picked me. My grandmother was lamenting, swearing a lot. Mum didn't approve either. But Dad ripped open the lapels of the jacket, put a message in it, sewed it back up with the tailor's... and said: 'If they stop you and want to search you, don't resist. Take the lapels in your hand, hold it up and: 'Search me.' But nobody stopped me. I was riding my bike, I had a white scarf and my head was covered. I rode through Bredůvka to Jablonné, where I gave the message. They were so happy. The next day, I was there one day... the next day Ladislav Netušil went there, and he was shot. At the exact spot where I was going, they shot him. He has a monument there, the monument is still there."