Transcript

"All I remember is just being on my own, walking out of that station and walking through Prague on my own. I remember that, and just realising that… it was all somehow different, very different. A lot of Russian soldiers, and a lot of strangers all of a sudden. And, of course the first thing I did was to go back to where I used to live. I don't know what I was expecting, but obviously there was no one there because I knew they were all dead. And then I went back to where we lived last, and I went there because we were friends with a concierge there, and she said we can hide all our belongings in the cellar, and we had carpets and china and, you know, valuable things, and furniture. And when I came back and I asked about those things she said the Germans came and took it all. But I saw some of the things in her flat. But I was too inexperienced in those things to do anything about it, so I just left and never went back there, but… I had a very low opinion of that. Of course if it was now I would say something; I would say this is mine, and this is mine, but I was too young I think to know how to cope with it. I know I spent a few nights at the hostel, roaming around Prague you know, and just feeling desperately lonely, because I suddenly realised there's nobody there.

I went… there was an office in Prague where you had lists and lists of people who came back; I don't know if it was in alphabetical order maybe, or dates when they came back, but you could check if you knew anybody who came back. And I went to see these lists every day, hoping somebody would came back I knew, but none of the family came back at all. And I went for days and days, actually for weeks afterwards, to see if anybody would come back, but they didn't. So I just remember walking around Prague being absolutely devastated, feeling that you know, I was alone in the world, that… I didn't know anybody, just didn't know anybody. It was really I think the worst time of the war. Although we were free and liberated, it was the very worst time because we realised, or I realised that nobody was going to come back, and that life is never going to be the same, and what I hoped for would happen after the war is never going to happen. The hope was gone. Because until then one had hope, that there would be a small group of people one knew, some relative, some friends, and one would start life again in a community; get married, have children, and… you know, carry on. But there was absolutely nobody there whom I knew. I was seventeen."