“It was sometime at the beginning of December 1954. I was eleven years old, my grandmother, my father was going to visit - and it was allowed that a minor could go too, so they took me with them. We arrived at Leopoldov at night, it was freezing, the winter was terrible. We slept in a completely frozen hotel where there was no heating. Then, we went to Holy Mass in the morning, the church was full of school children. And we went out to that fortress. Leopoldov is a fortress, something like Vyšehrad, those huge brick walls with embankments. The sun was rising behind that fortress. We walked along such a muddy frozen road to the fort. And there was a huge gate, a passage, everything was closed. After a while, a couple of prisoners came out with a warder, they were loading something, some watering cans, and again nothing. Well, then the side door opened and they called visitors and us too. We entered a huge driveway and turned left. To such a long underground passage, something like the casemates in Vyšehrad. And there was a warder standing on the edge who stopped us and asked who we were and what we were. He told my grandmother to tell her son that he was being rebellious and not listening. Grandma said that she wouldn´t even think about telling him, that he took after her and that she wouldn't tell him anything. Well, at the same time she said to him: 'And here I would like to give him a package.' She had a package with food. The warder scolded her accordingly. She was not allowed to give the package. And we walked down that corridor, on the right side there were - like at the post office - a long strip, wooden at the bottom, glass at the top, and always across such cubicles. And the visitor always stood there, and behind that glass stood the prisoner, next to him was the warder, who kept an eye on him to see if he blinked or gave any signals. There was also a warder who followed us, during those visits, who kept an eye out.
I didn't ask and leaned against the counter. There was a net like for talking. So, my uncle was about a meter away from me. He had to stand at attention while talking, he had such a rough coat without a collar and also trousers. He had to stand at attention, his hands were red and frozen. And then we were talking about what aunts were doing and that he was doing well and so on. And he always gave the blessing, they took care of that. At the end he became silent and just moved his lips. As he had his arms along his body, as he stood at attention, he moved the finger of his right hand as if making the cross. We stumbled, actually I did, it was simply strong experience, because my uncle was wonderful, he drove me on a motorcycle, he was a wonderful person, I liked him very much."
"Gottwald died and the teacher told us to go visit the castle where Gottwald was exhibited. We came to school in the morning. It was in the spring, in March, it was not that cold anymore. As boys we wore shorts, stockings and lace up shoes. We had a knee-length coat, a hat on our head, and such bags in which we carried an apple and a quarter, half a slice of bread split lengthwise with butter. That was a snack.
We took a tram to Pohořelec, to Malovanka, and already there we saw that a crowd of people goes from Strahov, from the stadium, down to the castle. So, we thought, it will end there somewhere. But when we came up, there were people standing in the corridor to the north stand of the stadium. And we had to go further to the right, and between the large Strahov stadium and the smaller one on the right, the line turned around four more times. And the cold was terrible there, there was a draft in that shadow in that corridor and we advanced, advanced, hungry, we had already eaten our snacks and we had nothing to drink, frozen... We only got to that Castle when it was getting dark." – “Why did you want to see it so much?” – “It was compulsory, the teacher ordered it. We thought we would come there and come back for lunch. Our parents thought so too. And then it was getting dark. Hradčanské náměstí was full of wreaths, from the first courtyard to the square. It went a little faster there. And he was probably in the Spanish hall or somewhere. It was full of workmen and workwomen in their festive suits from their confirmations and weddings, those young women with lace collars on their black dresses, who did nothing but hurried people up, 'Quick, proceed, quick, proceed.' So, we went around Klement Gottwald and went home. There were no phones. Our parents were completely desperate, they didn't know what was happening to us. Fortunately, the teacher said, 'You don't have to go to school tomorrow, kids.' So, we took a break after that. That's how I remember Klement Gottwald's death."
"He, actually, when he found out that they were after him... He was in the parish under Říp, the village Černoušek. He joined as a young priest. He was there for six weeks and the parish priest suffered a stroke. And then he managed everything. Next to it is the village Lečice, where he had his evening mass. And ministers... In childhood - the boy who has a stronger flashlight is the bigger dude. We envied the one who could shine the furthest. So, after the mass, the ministers lit the tower, whose flashlight shines more. Well, some comrades got hold of it and they reported that they were sending light signals to the imperialists after mass. The next day he taught at school and then he was arrested in Litoměřice. Then they released him, he worked in Žandov for another three months. The church secretary there told him: 'You would be transferring across the border, you must go.' And so, he got to Velvary. There he learned that they were after him, that they wanted to arrest him. And a colleague, a friend, advised him to go to Silesia, to Nový Jičín to some monastery, that he would be hidden there. But some informers lured him to Brno [under the false pretext] that he was supposed to arrange the crossing of some theologians there. He himself did not want to leave. He said he wouldn't run away, that he would stay here no matter what. So, they arrested him on the train from Brno to Ostrava. He was tried in Ostrava and there he met for the first time about thirty people, whom they declared to be an anti-state group. He saw those people for the first time in his life in court. He got fifteen years and served twelve."
"My brother-in-law Rudolph, he was such a wild boar, a very stout strong man, black hair slicked back, muscular, deep voice and very intelligent, a really wonderful person. And he in that scout group, I don't know with whom, they were just gathering weapons and still wanted to make an uprising, they were doing sabotage and various spiteful actions to militiamen and communists and policemen and so on. And he said that on that Bohdalec, that's the hill above Vršovice and Michle, that he buried a box with weapons on that side of the Michle gas plant and that he would show them where [the alleged box] was.
So, they went up there in the cars, the escort with him, they gave him a leather coat that those State Security officers wore so that he wouldn't be noticeable. And they walked along such a path on the top of that edge, actually a plain, and down a steep slope. He knew it well there, because he grew up there and as a boy had been running around there everywhere. And he tore off his coat at the right place, ran, bounced off, and jumped off the slope from which he slid down. There was a fence, perhaps he climbed over it. He ran through such sloped garden down to the fence on the street where the tram runs. He ran over it and ran down such a narrow street to Kačerov, where he wanted to hide in the villa where his scout girlfriend lived. When he got there, he had the presence of mind that he didn't go in there, but stopped, looked around the corner and a black car was already stopping in front of the gate of the house. About two State Security officers jumped out of it, and immediately occupied the nearest apartments and places where he could hide. He then somehow got to Vršovice, where he hid in a cellar.
As he was black-haired, someone bleached his hair to blonde, and he went from Vršovice up through Bohdalec to Spořilov in overalls and with a gasoline can. A car was waiting for him there, which took him to the Příbram forests. He said he saw patrols walking there, waiting for him. His father drove there with bus 101 as a driver, his mother as a conductor, and a State Security officer was permanently riding with them. Well, then they caught him and arrested him for some years because of it."
Academic sculptor and restorer Jan Bradna was born on June 5, 1943 in Prague. He grew up as the youngest of three children in the Catholic family of Jan and Bozena Bradnovi. His father was an employee of the Vyšehrad Catholic publishing house, but he lost his job after the communists came to power, and the new situation had a heavy impact on his health. The extended family was severely persecuted after the February coup of 1948. His uncle Antonín Bradna, a Catholic priest, was imprisoned in 1952 and spent twelve years in prison. The maternal uncle Václav Fechtner and the husbands of both of Jan‘s sisters Rudolf Probst and Karel Kukal were also imprisoned. Jan was a gifted draftsman since his childhood and after graduating from elementary school in 1958, he entered the Václav Hollar Art School, where he received excellent training in many fields from graphics to plastering. He completed his military service in a reconnaissance unit in Jindřichův Hradec. In 1966, he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in the sculpture studio of Karel Lidický. He wanted to focus mainly on the creation of medals, but after the third year he entered the newly opened sculpture restoration school. During the holidays of 1968, he had a summer job in the GDR, from where he returned immediately after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops. Both of his sisters and their husbands emigrated to Switzerland, so he himself did not consider emigrating because of his aging parents. From 1972 he worked as a sculptor and restorer. In the 1970s, he was invited as the youngest member to the restoration commission of the Union of Fine Arts, which had an overview of the monuments in Bohemia and Moravia. They assigned individual orders and approved the completed work. At the same time, he continued to work as a restorer, he especially liked the restoration of outdoor church statues in the squares of smaller towns and villages. He also participated in the restoration of the facade of the U Kamenného zvonu house on the Old Town Square. In September 1989 he began studying art history at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. He finished his studies in the 1990s with a diploma thesis on the History of the Marian Column and proposals for its restoration. In May 1990 he became one of the founding members of the Society for the Restoration of the Marian Column in the Old Town Square. He devoted himself to its activities for three decades. The restoration of the Marian Column was a highly controversial topic in society, but in the end, it was managed and the restored column was completed on June 4, 2020. Jan Bradna captured the story of the Marian Column and its restoration in the book “Raduj se, konej dobro a nech vrabce štěbetat” (Rejoice, do good, and let the sparrows talk). In 2022 he was still active as a medal maker and consultant in monument restoration.
