Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

pany I met just one person who was a real piece of work. When Hitler ordered that Germans
must have kids, he quickly had one more. Anyway, he wasn’t vindictive and he didn’t denounce.
Probably from 1941 I was already working in the Chamber of Commerce where I was
working fully for the war effort. The work in Triola, where we were making rubber masks, was
organized by the Chamber of Commerce. Since it was made from rubber we were piercing it
with a pin. Finally, one German came and scolded us, but we pretended not to understand. In
the end they took the gas masks from us and we were sewing underwear for German soldiers.
I also have to say that we were gluing glass shields onto the gas masks. We were using acetone
and because acetone is harmful to your health they gave us an extra bun and milk – about
a quarter liter of milk.
Did you have problems getting food during the war?
People were getting special tickets, rationing tickets. For that we got about one egg a month,
a week, I can’t really remember. We couldn’t do anything about this, it was war. We didn’t have
any relatives in the country who could help us, and so we had to get through it by ourselves.
There were a lot of people like that. The worst thing was that they took our money. I had on
my credit book about 200,000 and I don’t even want to say how much my parents lost. For
example to get cloth for dress was very difficult. Not everyone could afford this. It was very
difficult, but finally we struggled through this.
What did the Prague demonstration look like?
I was in Prague then, in a basement vault at Žižkov. At Vítkov 5 , there was a little chalet and
one German was shooting at us from there. All of a sudden there was a young man walking
with a bazooka and he kind of minimized the danger. The German got him and it completely
tore him apart. My lady friend had his arm right behind her window, it was just disgusting.
Then the Russians came and my lady friend and I wanted to go to Wenceslas Square, since we
thought there would be a chance for dancing. However, it was still not allowed to go there so
we returned home. We didn’t go out until May 9th. Prague was awfully demolished, cobbles
were torn out from the sidewalks because of the barricades that were built everywhere. Trees
were just in bloom, like nothing was really happening. From our house there was a man who
worked at the Old Town hall and he got stuck in there on Saturday. He came back home after
everything was over. Everyone rushed out to welcome him and he couldn’t resist and fainted.
He was at the town hall for five days and all the strain on his nerves finally caught up with
him.
After the war it was mainly revealed how greedy we were. During the rebellion they had
brought a full bucket of smoked foods to the cellar. I was walking by the butcher’s shop in the
street daily and all of a sudden people came with a message that they had looted him because
he was German. I didn’t have a clue that a guy named Hromada could be German. They said
that the food would be split up among people in the cellar. Then they took everything somewhere
and I can just tell you that they didn’t even let us smell the meat. I really lost my faith
in people.
How did you live through February 1948?
Of course I was brought up in an anti-communist family. When someone mentioned the word
Communism or Communist, my parents were like red cloth to a bull. We lived in Žižkov and
5 Vítkov is an extended hill on the right bank of the Vltava river. It forms a border between Karlín and Žižkov.
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