Ing. Jan Moravec

“Once we went to the vicar’s, I was about five years old, and the vicar had a housemaid who was cooking for him - there were people playing cards downstairs, women talking how things were going, and so on - and she took my hand and said: ‘Come with me, I’ll show you something!’ She took me by hand and led me upstairs to a large hall and that was quite a something for a young boy – a room full of weapons! He had an entire collection – rifles, swords, sabres, little cannons, armour, revolvers etc., a lot of things. I was looking at it, touching the things and I took a revolver. Then I went to him with the revolver and said: ‘Look what I found!’ and he says: ‘You like it, don’t you?’ I said: ‘I do.’ ‘Keep it then!’”

“It went so far that they gave me an application form and I filled it out but I was hesitant about what to write there – there was one interesting question: What is your opinion on religion? I simply wrote what I felt, which is that all people have always believed that there is something greater than just to run through this world for a little while, so why should it be otherwise in this regard? One believes that there is simply something greater than just to walk through this world and die, and after death comes a much greater time than just the period that one spends here. I thus summarized it in this way and I submitted my application and everything was all right. Then, about a month later, there was a big fuss; they called me and asked me if I knew what I had done to them and whether this question that they had asked me in the questionnaire applied to me. I answered that of course it did. They were terrified; the party chairman nearly got kicked out for that and from then on they left me in peace. I believe that God perhaps did somehow help me in this.”