Libuše Jehličková

“And what really moved me when I saw his tomb [Jan Palach´s], where we went to place the candles. They dug the mother´s son out of the grave. What kind of communistic hyenism was it...? Dig the dead body out of the grave that bothered us, because we went to burn candles. Not even the fascists did anything like that. He had a tomb at the Olšany cemetery. Today the grave is only a symbolical one. A metal statue lying on the grave, because the body is not in there. They picked him up and burnt him without asking his mother. I cannot understand it. I read something similar in a book about Toufar. They let his niece going from prison to prison for three years, even though she had no money looking for her uncle. They did not even write her a letter to tell her that her uncle had been dead for three years.”

„But right after my birth it was all so sad. I had christenings at St. Wenceslas church in Vrsovice and the day after my christenings, on 26 May, 1940, the gestapo came to arrest my dad. He mentioned in the printing office that he had a gun at home against the Germans. A young disciple said that about him, so the Germans [gestapo] came and searched the whole apartment inside out. It took them all day before they found it [the pistol]. Dad kept it hidden in the toilet water tank. My dad was locked up in Waldheim, Germany. When he returned, he was so excited to see us again that as he was going up the elevator and forgot his suitcase with all his stuff, and it got stolen from him before he managed to get down the elevator again.“