"The silent protest was very quiet because we didn't dare anymore. These supporters and friends of the Soviet Union started to come out. So to say, 'I can't even smell the Russians,' you couldn't do that in public or in a big forum. Because to express ourselves in such a way... What are we going to say, we were weaker and we were shy. We didn't try to stand out because we couldn't."
"What got me a lot was January . January 16th is my birthday, January 16th is the day Jan Palach burned himself to death. Since we were doing nursing school, we tended to save lives, not lose them. Plus, he was a young boy, we were young girls. So when we imagined the pain, because we saw it often in the hospital, nobody could understand... We didn't understand the strength that he had to do that. At that time, to go to pay homage to Jan Palach was slowly becoming a crime. We started wearing at least black ribbons on our lapels, most of the students. And when the farewell was on January 22nd, we gathered in Klatovy Square. A few people, it wasn't a whole crowd. Right after that, the next day we were summoned into the principal's office, where we had to justify why."
"I didn't really feel love for the Soviet Union. Because all we felt was fear. Fear of their soldiers, because you don't know. He doesn't understand what you're saying, they didn't even try. And next, they were so manipulated, they kept thinking they were going to save us. But there was nothing to save. So in that way, when these people are so manipulated, they're young guys too... When they're brainwashed like that, you don't know: he's going to pull the trigger, he's not going to pull the trigger. You get shot, you don't get shot. Nobody knew what was going to happen."
Máří Magdalena Hajšmanová was born Máří Magdalena Živná on 16 January 1952 in Prague. She completed primary school in Přeštice and continued her studies at the Secondary Medical School in Klatovy, graduated in general nursing. During her summer holidays at her grandparents‘ house in 1968 she lived through the occupation of Czechoslovakia. After the arrival of the troops, her father left the Communist Party and the family was monitored. In 1969, on her birthday, Jan Palach was burned to death, which deeply shook her as a medical school student. In the 1970s she worked as a nursery nurse and later as a kindergarten teacher. In the 1980s, she returned to the health sector. From the 1990s she worked in the Hyperbaric Chamber Department at the First Internal Medicine Clinic of the Pilsen Lochotín Hospital. There she held the position of head nurse. In 2024 she was retired and helped out in a children‘s shoe shop. In 2024 she was living in Pilsen.
