Pavel Rejchrt

"The psychotherapy at 31 seemed to be that all of us lunatics from 31 were banished upstairs where there was a big room with a projection screen, and for recreational or therapeutic reasons they showed us movies. And it's so unbelievable that the film, which was supposed to be such an educational/relaxing/therapeutic film, was corpses from Auschwitz, pulled out of the ovens. These piles on these carts and these corpses against the wall in Auschwitz, I saw that as part of the psychotherapy in Bohnice in the spring of 1967. I can testify to that myself. Then we had occupational psychotherapy. I was given a little block of wood and an emery board at pavilion 31. And now I had to sandpaper it to make it smooth. And I said, 'Mr. nurse, what's the use of that?' He said, 'Shut up or you'll get a shot.' There was no other treatment. So I kept my mouth shut and pretended to grind the splinter."

"I painted very early on, at about thirteen, I started drawing everything. My mother was once fascinated by a picture of a cow with horns, in a textbook, and I traced it outside with a pencil, made a copy of the picture. She was very skilled. Well, that was the beginning of my parents' admiration for the fact that my hand was somehow drawing nicely. And then, when I was about fifteen and a half, not quite sixteen, I started going to the professor of the art school on Hollar Square, I went to his apartment, to Václav Kytek, and there I learned to draw and paint a little bit in watercolor, then in pastel and so on for about two years under his tutelage. That was my preparation for the exams at the Academy."