PaedDr. Jan Luštinec

"My grandmother's name was Antonia Noskova, née Valentova, my great-grandmother was Valentova, she was born in 1877, which is incredible, she lived to be 90, so I remember her very well, so that's incredible. Then I had a great-grandfather, but I don't remember him. That's quite an interesting thing as well, that was this great grandmother's husband and he was quite a bit of a bum but he was an excellent cabinet maker. Other than that he went through the fronts of the First World War, maybe that's why there weren't more children, but then when he came back he took up the trade. They had a pretty good thing that all their children, poor as they were from a poor family, they married and married quite well, so the material situation of their parents also improved and they lived a much more peaceful life during the First Republic. Well, then after the war they decided that they wanted to have a house in their old age. And so they saved up money with the help of the children and so on. Now imagine that in May, actually in the beginning of June 1953 they wanted to buy a house. They had already booked it, looked for it - the house is no longer standing today - and then May 30th came, the currency reform came, and they lost the money. My great-grandfather had a stroke. (...) Then he lived for six more weeks and then he died. And the money they had for the house was not even enough for the funeral."

"She [my mother] never talked about it, my grandmother told me everything. Not my grandfather, he didn't like to talk about it either, my grandmother told me and then I learned things very hard and cruel. And I think that was also one of the things that led to the imbalance in my mother as I talked about it. My grandfather, of course, lost his business. He had a wholesale business at that time and he lost everything. One thing that happened was that they slapped him with another fine and he appealed, which was terrible because then they gave him a bogus fine of 200,000 crowns, which was terrible. Today one understands, then my grandmother told me all about it. She said, 'They gave us a 200,000 fine because we appealed.' Supposedly because they had some parcels loaded in there and it was missing, but that was common, anybody can tell you that when parcels came in, that it was hacked. But there were write-offs, that was reckoned with, but no, they gave them everything to replace. So not only did they lose everything, but they lost money. It didn't stop there. My grandfather, who had business school and I would say was very cultured and well-read, was not allowed to go to work among the people. He had to go to work in the Technolene factory and was only allowed to be at the yard party, here in Jilemnice. Then they took pity on him and relieved him, he went to work at the sawmill in Štěpanice. Then he worked here in the sailmaking factory until he retired, which was a terribly hard job. To this day I can still see - my grandfather was huge - how his hands were terribly cut. You could see in his fingers that he worked hard. Grandpa was one of those people who didn't like to talk about it. He still did about the war, but he was too smart, he understood everything, had it all put together. He didn't compartmentalise. He knew that if it hadn't been 1938 and if it hadn't been for the war, it wouldn't have been 1948. He understood that all of this was somehow connected."

"We had to go to the forest, collect moss for the crib, pick the “breznik” tree, as the heather was called, and break the beech twigs to decorate the crib. Those who prepared their own nativity scenes always carved something in secret, and it must have been a surprise to the whole neighbourhood to see what was new. It was just like the mushroom pickers who kept their places secret, so the crib makers kept what was new. Then the nativity scene was built. It wasn't built until Christmas Eve, only in places where it was small, even if it was decent. In some places the nativity scenes were really big, so they had to start long before. I was told by Professor Gärstner, who grew up in Benecko, that it was like a ceremony. And that's true, I remember that at my grandmother's house too. First, one went to the attic a week before and there one went to wake the nativity scene, the attic was called the “nadeschod”. And there was a knock on the boxes, and then nothing for a week, and after a week the boxes started coming down. So the scaffolding had to be put up for the nativity scene, the boxes had to be put on it, the songs had to be sung to it, and it had to go in the order that was set. First the "darhachek" - that was the nativity figure - was taken out, and then the order was followed, until finally the nativity was completed while the songs were sung. When it was finished, it was not yet lit up; that belonged to Christmas Eve. Nevertheless, it was a festive moment."

"As a student, I used to come here to the [Krkonoše] Museum for a part-time job. Zdeněk Kučera was an excellent director there, we had a group there and I liked it so much as a historian. The museum had good collections, a lot of people came to the castle, I was a guide and I enjoyed it immensely. As it happens, I fell in love with it uncritically. But I had no idea... I was already thinking about going into teaching, looking for a job, seeing if I could get a position. It looked like I was going to go to Horní Branná. And in the meantime, Principal Kučera had to leave that place in 1975, and I didn't come back until 1977. In the meantime, another director came in, let's not name him, but he managed the place terribly, he didn't make a single addition in the whole time. It turned out that he was taking paintings and having them restored and not returning them to the people. He handed over about 20 crowns in admission fees for how many months instead of the normal [much higher] amount, opening at 11am for example. The situation was untenable, he had to leave. At the time, they wrote to me at the army that a place was opening up and I, a moron, said I would love it. They asked, and I was informed it would be possible. But I had no idea what I was getting into. When I got back, that's when it started. The mansion was very dilapidated when I got in, there was no water running in the whole building, the toilet was dry. The exposures leaked and the interior plaster was washed down to the brick and there were wrapping paper tacks tacked on to cover it. Fortunately the offices were heated with coal, at least there was some heating. However, the office was narrow, it was cold on all sides. When the heating stopped, it was ten degrees within half an hour. So life there was not easy at all."

"I remember - and this was my first encounter with 1989 - when I went to Prague, there were still some things to arrange for the exhibition. My wife told me not to get involved in anything there, that it could get even worse. But I came to the National Museum, we took care of the essentials, and my colleague told me to go to Wenceslas Square. So we went to Wenceslas Square. I came home and my wife said: 'You can tell me - you're out of your mind, you have two children here and I've already got a call that you're walking on Wenceslas Square and on Národní třída.' Coming back here wasn't very pleasant, because the newspapers that weren't pro-regime were not coming here, they were being thrown away, Svobodne Slovo, Lidová demokracie weren't coming here at all. And now the euphoria of Prague and the unbelievable deadness here. Then it started to move here too. I remember the first time we walked to the square, it was snowing and it was terribly quiet. I wondered if anyone was going to be in the square or not. My wife and I went, we got a babysitter for the kids. Suddenly we came in and there was quite a crowd of people in the square. And that was nice, because we knew, 'Oh, here we go.' Then the information started coming in and the meetings started growing."