I thought they were going to kill us. And that’s when the Russians started arriving, remembers a witness of the Prague Uprising

Events: Uprising against the German occupiers (source: ČT24)

The end of the war on Czech territory was preceded by fierce fighting in the streets. In Prague alone, according to historians, over three thousand people died during the uprising against the German occupiers.

“Only over our corpses” was written on the barricade in Národní street. The Czechs left similar challenges to the occupiers in May 1945 in a number of places. And the Nazis heard them.

During one of the biggest massacres of the Prague Uprising, frightened residents hid in cellars before the battle. But the SS members discovered them and killed them all. Among the 51 victims was a pregnant woman and several children. According to Emilie Prošková, who was hiding with her parents just a few meters from the scene of the tragedy, there could have been many more dead.

“They said it was going to blow up, these barracks. To prevent the abomination they did there. So I thought, now they’re going to kill us. Well, suddenly they started to disappear. The Russians were probably coming from Benešov. That apparently saved our lives,” described Emilie Prošková, a witness of the Prague Uprising.

Just a few hundred meters away, the Germans shot 23 prisoners, who had to dig their own graves before execution. Just in the vicinity of Pankrác the fights were the hardest. The twenty-year-old Ladislav Müller was also hiding there in the basement. “We foolishly fortified the window, which it was. Our necky, that’s what I remember, and my big drawing board,” he recalled.

Before that, he helped build barricades. He hoped it would slow down the enemies movement. But they finally got to their house. “One of the tanks took aim at Dad, but it must have been wrong because it didn’t hit – luckily. And this is a piece of shrapnel that father picked up just then and brought back as a trophy. Despite all the hardships, everyone was in a very good mood. The war was over,” Müller said.

Both German and Soviet plans counted on fighting on the territory of the Czech Republic around May 20. “The Czech Uprising prepared the largest, last combat-capable group of armies in the center, in the rear, in the background, so the German negotiators then had no choice but to sign Germany’s unconditional capitulation, and by then on May 8, it was all over,” explained historian Tomáš Jakl.

Exactly whether the bloody uprising at the end of the war made sense is one of the most frequent questions that Jakl answers when he guides people around the sites of the May battles. Müller, who has experienced them, has a clear answer. “I think it should have. It was for the psyche of the nation,” the witness concluded.