"The war here did not mean street fighting. I went to school, out with my friends, a seemingly normal life, but the adults were always worried about family members, afraid of arrest. It wasn't until the end of the war that we used to go to the shelter of the basement during Allied air raids. Everyone had their own gas mask, personal luggage, and in the shelter were suitcases with valuables and the most necessary clothes. True, I also saw on the way to my grandmother's house the demolished houses and boarded up windows after the bombing in Vysočany. There was a shortage of everything, food on tickets, but my mother was a good housekeeper. However, it brought up me and the whole generation to be thrifty; it was true that bread was God's gift, and to throw away any of the food was a sin."
"They searched the whole apartment, looking everywhere, and in the room where Opálek was hiding, there was a closet, a sort of chamber. There they pierced the contents of the closet and went back into the room, and one soldier was heading for the couch. My mother was standing somewhere near the table, but - I don't know whether on purpose or unintentionally - she pushed the chair and it fell on the back and the seat fell out. Mum said the German quite gallantly came over and helped her put the chair back up. They put it up and the soldier turned and walked away. If it hadn't been for that, and he had made it to the couch, he would certainly have been attracted by the two cushions that were propped up against the back of the couch. And if he had knocked them off, he would have seen the narrow edge of the white door... and that would have been the end of it."
"My father was arrested on the morning of August 5, 1941, at about 5:30 in our apartment. During the two-hour search that followed, the Gestapo found no compromising material, but confiscated some jewelry, photographs from years past, and a radio receiver that dad had to carry when he left. He was imprisoned at Pankrác. Every week or fortnight - I don't remember - my mother would bring a letter and clean linen in exchange for dirty linen, but dad wasn't allowed to write. It turned out that even through harsh interrogations he didn't betray anyone. On September 28, 1941, the new Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, took office and began his cruel reign. On his direct orders, eighteen high-ranking officers, members of the Defence of the Nation, were executed by firing squad without trial, and dad with them."
Alena Kasprová was born on 7 June 1933 in Písek. Her father Bohdan Kasper was a major in the Czechoslovak army, her mother Anna a teacher. In 1938 she died tragically in a car accident. Her father later remarried to his old love, Terezie Freyová, who became a loving second mother. Bohdan Kasper, a legionnaire and officer in the Czechoslovak army, joined the resistance group Obrana Národa (Defence of the Nation) after the beginning of the war. After his arrest and execution, Tereza Kasprová also became actively involved in the resistance, hiding the paratrooper Adolf Opalka in their apartment for several days before and after the assassination of the Reich Protector. Alena Kasprová graduated from grammar school and then studied Czech language - Russian language at the Faculty of Education in Prague. She worked as a teacher, studied English through distance learning and, despite repeated appeals, refused to join the Communist Party. Mother of two children, also grandmother and great-grandmother at the time of filming in 2018, she is still active, proudly preserves the legacy of her parents and is a devoted patriot.
