PhDr. Jiří Tichota

“I remember that when we found out that he was in Řepy, where the convent now is; they were imprisoned in that convent. We were able to visit him there once every two months. It was always a horrible sight for us, because we were let into a room where three cops with red epaulettes were sitting, and they were in charge of the prisoners. Any my father in a striped uniform was in a cage in the middle of the room. It was a kind of a large wire cage, reaching almost to the ceiling. He was simply being kept inside the cage as we were talking with him. We were not allowed to give him anything nor go too close too him. My mom tried hard and my dad who since the times of the First Republic – obviously, I did not remember it – was terribly afraid of communists, and he especially regarded Stalin as a villain, which eventually turned out to be true. He was convinced that just like all the others who had been already eliminated, the group around him, the so-called traitors… my father too was convinced that he would never get out anymore. He always cried when we were leaving, saying the he would see us no more.”

“On 5th May the shooting started in Prague. The men from Lahovice therefore built a barricade on the bridge over the Berounka River and they did it for two reasons: one was to prevent the Germans from escaping from Prague to the West. But actually, what mattered was a different thing: the Germans had called in some tank divisions from the West to come and put down the Prague Uprising, and they were stopped by the barricade where people with several rifles tried to prevent the Germans from reaching Prague. What is unbelievable about it is that when they then .. blasted the barricade to pieces, they also destroyed by shooting the flat in which we lived, and the commander of the SS group then had all men in Lahovice executed at night on 8th May. Not many people speak about it, and so I am speaking about it.”