Her uncle’s dangerous gift

In the tension surrounding the months before the outbreak of World War II, Olga Šišková's parents recieved a rifle as a gift from her uncle, who was a Czechoslovak army officer. Which meant there were now two rifles in the house where Olga lived – one in the apartment of her grandparents on the ground floor, and another in her parents flat upstairs. After the war had started, both rifles moved between her grandfathers and parents flats because no one knew which was safer. “Then the days following the assassination of Heydrich came and the rifles were still in our flat in the closet," says Mrs. Šišková. “And one day the Germans came to our place in hobnailed boots and pounded on the door. They searched the flat and began to poke their bayonets in between the clothes in the closet! And then one of them triumphantly reached into the closet and began to pull something out of it. For a moment, I thought my father was going to faint. And do you know what that soldier pulled out? A tripod, (my father was an avid photographer). The rifle was right next to the tripod! If they had found it, we’d all be dead!” Opposite Olga's house, across the street, she remembers, there used to be a German garrison. Eventually, the soldiers lost interest in the rifle. Today, none of these houses exists anymore. In their place, thousands of cars pass daily via the interchange crossroad Malovanka headed to Bílá hora or into the tunnel. The history from the days of the war seems to be forgotten but the witnesses of earlier times are alive and remember it all.