"We were in Prague and my wife and I were relieved that it was finally here." - "The arrival of the tanks was a relief?" – “In the sense that a man knows, how it actually is.” I think the idea of not happening was naive, and the only question expected was when it happens. So when the tanks arrived, there was no longer a question of when this would happen. When you look at the map, it was an illusion. But we were still hoping to see if the occupation will take place or not. And when it did, one was relieved. It was already clear what to do about it.”
“I hate to remember that, it was so embarrassing that I found myself in something I could not do. I'm not the kind that can lead others; I prefer researching. I have seen this in the Black Barons, for example, that the cadre-good officers found themselves in something they could not do. "For example, an officer shot himself because he was good at his profession, was given a post, and he was desperate.”
“When we started dating and it looked serious, my mother said a letter in French came from an engineer Thom [his wife´s father]. He wrote French because he knew my mother could speak French, German wouldn't sound good and she couldn't speak Czech well. He was proposing my mother a meeting about our relationship. He met my mother at Wenceslas Square in the hotel Šroubek. Both of them came to the conclusion that it wasn't that bad and they closed it for us. I mean the Czech-German relation. They gave us permission to marry. They did impose any Czech-German problems in it. This was about their generation. Every marriage already has enough of its own problems.”
“The glassmakers were incredibly gifted people, but they lived in poor conditions. So her ideas were straightforwardly clear – only when poverty was eradicated, all of a sudden everything becomes amazing. She also left the Catholic Church, and in my birth certificate I got a signed “no religion”. So she “disconnected” from the Church. There was a big religious dimension. The desire for a better life and at the same time the fact that she had people working together, helping each other, if possible, studying and doing incredible things. My grandfather, František Petrusek, whose dad died, had to start earning money in the fourth grade. I got his fourth-grade report. But he continued his apprenticeship as a self-taught student and got to college level in mathematics.”
Vladimír Gerlich was born on December 22, 1940 in Prague. His father Karel Gerlich came from Heřmanice in the Ostrava region, his mother Jarmila Petrusková from the glassblower´s family from Krásno nad Bečvou. During the war Vladimir‘s father worked in the communist anti-Nazi resistance. In February 1940 the Gestapo arrested his father and in November of the same year his mother. The orphaned Vladimir was taken care of by a family friend, Anna Valigur, until the end of the war. The Nazis executed his father in January 1943, and after the war, his mother returned from the Ravensbrück labour camp. She settled with Vladimir in Krnov, where they had the background of relatives from father‘s side. The mother remained faithful to the communist party for the rest of her life and thus influenced her son. He graduated from the grammar school in Krnov and then got to the Czech Technical University in Prague to study the field of nuclear physics. In 1961–1969, Vladimir was a member of the communist party, but he also believed in God. In 1963 he married Jana Thomová, his classmate from the Krnov grammar school, a Catholic of German nationality persecuted by the public security police. In the 1980s Vladimir was baptized. He worked in his field at the Research Institute of Mathematical Machines in the Laboratory for Failure Analysis. He and his wife raised four children.
Photo from the school leaving exam, left column 1 and 3 photo the husbands Gerlichs; after 1990 5 classmates admitted that the Czech-German problem affected them. 1 graduate was Greek
Photo from the school leaving exam, left column 1 and 3 photo the husbands Gerlichs; after 1990 5 classmates admitted that the Czech-German problem affected them. 1 graduate was Greek
