Marie Polívková

"When Jan Palach was burned to death, on the anniversary in 1970 I made a bulletin board in the waiting room of the health center with his photo, a flower and a memory of him, that he sacrificed himself for us. And the next day I was fired from my job. I went from the health center to the hospital to the internship. With three kids, it wasn't good. Luckily, my mom helped me out when I was working shifts. But the guys at the shaft, then it was back to Alexander Mine, they spoiled me and were upset that I had to quit my job and decided to write a petition that they wanted me back. So I was interned for six months, then there were vacations, holidays, and by September they wanted me back."

"When it was the anniversary [in August 1969], we [Dr. Pittner and his colleague and wife Hanka Pittner] wore black ribbons and he wore a black tie. It was a big problem, too. And the next one was, since I was a member of the Communist Party at the time, I wrote [a letter] saying that the party that uses aggression to govern itself, arrests people, can't stand the truth, and that I had learned about the concentration camps, the gulags that were in Russia. That it was so shocking to me that it was all run on the basis of violence and not on the basis of making our republic prosper, that we are so oppressed. I read the letter at a meeting of the Communist Party. At that time I was saved by the fact that Dr. Redl, with whom I served at the Alexander mine, was the chairman of the Communist Party in the hospital in Duchcov. When I read the letter, I gave it to him. He immediately traced it and the next day the security was there and they wanted the letter. He said to them, 'Please, there was such a storm afterwards, the letter was lost, I don't have it.' Because they didn't have it, they couldn't do anything and I slipped away."