Miloš Hoznauer

“Still at the beginning of 1960s a professor was fired in V Úžlabině, who mentioned the name of Masaryk. The students asked her, as they came across his name in a text and she had to tell them he was the first president of the republic and a really popular one called daddy Masaryk; they wrote it down in their notebooks and a certain parent discovered it and made a big deal of it. And she got immediately kicked out. She could not even take her handbag from her office. They made a search there on her keeping any prohibited literature. Of course she defended herself not wanting to give a falsify history, as Masaryk actually was the first president and sought advocacy at the former minister of education, Nejedlý, who wrote a large monograph on Masaryk. He didn’t meet her in person, but sent her a note via his secretary: ‚I regret that comrade Záhořová chose this very person out of my rich and many works.‘ So finally she was meant to return as the school inspector finally approved her case was a slightly… I don’t even know how to say it, and the professor Záhořová was allowed to return in the end. But the labour unions sent a resolution to the department that they didn’t wish to have such a teacher in their school any more. As an inspector made them write such statement, otherwise the school was to undergo a thorough inspection. So this was still happening in 1960s. So the great 1960s, there were not so many, as it all ended up in 1968. So there were maybe five… or six years of such a hopeful time.”

“When I got transferred to the gymnasium Nad Štolou, the director First was there too for a punishment, who was getting in contact with West-German gymnasium in 1960s rather than with an East-German school. So that was an ideological fault and following 1968 he was transferred to the gymnasium and he wanted to get his reputation back and became a real monster. A certain colleague attempted to commit murder for the persecution. So for the first time in my life I became an informer. I went to ask at the regional committee of the communist party, if they knew what kind of a director they got there. Surprisingly they accepted me quite nicely, comrade secretary told me: ‚Well we know comrade First. If today the China people came here, tomorrow he has got slant eyes. But the party needs such people to fulfil its objectives, just temporarily using them to fulfil its goals.‘ That was a lovely formulation, that…”