Ing. Zdeněk Skála

"That was nice. When my grandfather sorted it out like this, to Denmark and to Palestine, truly as Švejk he told them: 'And after the war in Prague.' Which is paradoxical because they really declared themselves Jews and my father was a Zionist. But Masaryk’s deception was so perfect that they also thought of themselves as Czechoslovak patriots. So after the war in Prague. So they were in Prague after the war, waiting for my grandfather to return."

"At first, I did it as a volunteer, right after the revolution I secured a synagogue, but statically. There was this big project, it was called 16 stars, which dealt with the reconstruction of Jewish monuments. Jirka Daníček was in charge, and they knew me, so they dragged me into it. I was a technical geek there. It was excellent. It worked, but luckily I'm out of it now. It’s absolutely exhausting. This was European money, so they had to ensure sustainability, but it worked, the buildings were restored. But that idea is a little off. Jirka is a person who takes care of those monuments. It's nice that the roots are here, that the Jews are not a drift, that they didn't appear here from nowhere, that they were here. It's good as an argument against Bartoš, who wouldn't listen to the argument anyway. That's the kind of thing it is. But those buildings are dead. No Jews will appear in those buildings. There is a synagogue in Mikulov. These are normal buildings, that building is a normal building, Jews have no consecration, deconsecration. Simply, if there is a Torah in that building, then that house has some status. But it can be your building, we climb up to your castle and you have a synagogue out of it. Watch out for us. And because there are those wonder-rabbis, at the cemetery in Mikulov, to whom Hasidim from all over the world gather, they bring you the Torah there for some holiday, they let them in, and there is nothing else there."