"There was something she could say. There was such a moment with Grandma: Nicholas was at Stavoprojekt. It was so that one said a poem there. And I said, 'The whole country remembers the Ilyich Lenin.' And on it went... And my grandmother looked at me and said, 'Well, that's what you told them.' I can see her nodding like that, and I thought, 'Why does she say that it with the kind of grin?' It was, 'Well, that's what you told them.' And I didn't ask anything again. Just nothing.”
"Our more aware classmate, Honza Kupka, at the time I was already dating my current and only husband, so he came to us at school and said there was a demonstration at Albertov and that he thought we should all go there. So we went there. It was a great experience for me, a lot of people, the power of the crowd that went to Vyšehrad, I was totally taken by surprise. (…) It was no heroism to follow them to the National street. Only later I began to gather information and was much more of a shock for me that I let it be like that. Much could have happened to us and I didn't even admit I could have been beaten really. There I went in the cordon of those guys with plastic covers through Mikulandska and nobody touched us. I don't know if they beat the other only when we passed by.”
Monika Krausová was born as Monika Frantová on March 28, 1968 in Vimperk into a family of architect and seamstress. Her mother‘s family was affected by the communist regime in the 1950s, her mother František Kolář was sentenced to 25 years in prison for high treason. Monika spent a peaceful childhood in Sezimovo Ústí, where her family moved when she was two years old. She was particularly interested in playing piano and drawing. After graduating from high school in 1986 she began studying architecture at the Czech Technical University. On November 17, 1989, she took part in a student parade from Albertov and experienced the intervention of police officers on Národní třída, although she escaped herself without harm. She talked about the events on Národní třída in the post-November days with students at the secondary school in Soběslav and employees of the Kovosvit factory in Sezimovo Ústí. At the Faculty of Architecture, it has also experienced positive post-November changes, especially the arrival of architects from praxis to the profession as professors. In the 1990s she founded an architectural studio with her friend and gave birth to two sons. Later moved to Tábor with her husband moved, where they now run a project studio.
