"They freed up those members who were enthusiastic about the idea of helping colleagues behind the Iron Curtain. They came here on their own. They were people who had a certain name, who had their expertise, who had something to pass on, and they mostly came as tourists. They did it by checking into a hotel in Brno to be on the register, and then they went to stay with someone. They were in the hotel to have a cover. Every foreigner had to register, so they checked in at the hotel, but they went to live with the Jelineks, or with us, or with the Zlatuškas, or with the Oslzl family. On that occasion they gave a lecture. Sometimes they went to Bratislava, to Prague, I don't know. The second branch was in Paris, that was on the initiative of Nathalie Roussarie, who was a librarian at a lycée in Paris. She organized it. The idea, or the desire to do it, went over the top. So, for example, Jacques Derrida was here to give a lecture. When he went back home to the airport, I think he was followed, so they confiscated a package of powdered dumplings, he liked the dumplings, so they confiscated it for analysis to see if there was cocaine or something. They detained Derrida and it was an international embarrassment."
"How to get it to Prague. My brother was studying math at the time and he was living in the dorms with a young man named Milan Badal. He later became a Dominican priest, he served here in Old Brno, he has already died. And here this Milan, a student, went to Ladislav Hejdánek's philosophical seminars. So his brother gave it to him to send it to Professor Patočka after Hejdánek. So Milan Badal took our signatures - we wrote Jaroslav Blažke, Marie Blažková, that we didn't like what was happening here and that we were joining in. We wrote a letter saying that we were joining the signatories. This was in February 1977 or so. Milan took it away, gave it to Hejdánek, Hejdánek gave it to Professor Patočka. One day he gave it to him, and the next day Professor Patočka went to the French Embassy, had a meeting with an ambassador, and they arrested him right afterwards, he was interrogated, and within a week he died. He got our signature just before he died. He was happy to get another batch of signatures and then the poor guy was already going to the end. We signed it, but it worked normally, because my husband's name was Blažke and not Blažek, and as it was handwritten, at the end the guys evaluated Blažke as A. So originally they wrote Jaroslav Blažka-help worker, Marie Blažková-housewife. I had small children, so they left us alone for a very long time and didn't know about us at all. That never happened to anyone."
"It was the holidays. My sister had a little daughter and her husband was in Nový Jičín on an internship, he was a zootechnician. They were both still finishing school and they entrusted me with their little girl. My fourteen year old brother was still with me, I was seventeen years old and I was away for a few days in a cottage in Bernartice nad Odrou, which is not far from Nový Jičín. My brother-in-law was going there for his practice. He went in the morning and came back in the evening and I took care of the children. I used to go to mass in the morning. There was an early morning mass every day at seven o'clock in Bernartice, so I went there. I got there and now it was after mass and the parish priest turned very seriously from the altar and said, 'My dear friends, let us pray very much, we have been attacked by the Russians today. We have foreign armies here, so let's pray, it's a very serious situation.' That's how I found out, in the church. I went shopping, I was still planning to go to the store after the church and there were big clouds of people and everybody wanted to make supplies. It was such a warrior instinct. And the manager of that store, Mr. David, said, 'No, one kilo of flour each, one tin each, make sure everybody gets something,' and he made sure everybody got something. That was nice, wasn't it? And people accepted it. Okay, yes, no hoarding."
Marie Blažková was born on 23 May 1951 in Opava. Her father was a historian and archivist, her mother was a musician. Both parents made no secret of the fact that they were Catholics. Marie Blažková grew up with her three siblings in the Catholic faith and was the only one of the children who, thanks to fortunate circumstances, had no problem getting into her dream school. Between 1969 and 1974, she even studied two majors, art history and ethnography. Her husband, Jaroslav Blažke, became an educator, and they started their family while still students. The Blažke family lived for a few years in northern Moravia, then moved permanently to Brno. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Maria and Jaroslav Blažke’s friendship with the Jelínek, Zlatuška and Rajnošek families led them to organise secret residential seminars, at which they went to lecture on the activities of the Jan Hus Educational Foundation, and to publish samizdat literature from behind the Iron Curtain. Marie Blažková and her husband were also signatories of Charter 77. After 1989, Marie Blažková was finally able to devote herself to heritage conservation. Despite her love of monuments, she eventually left this work and gladly accepted an offer to work for the emerging Proglas Christian radio project, which she was excited about. Since 1996 she remained faithful to it for the next 15 years. For many years she worked there as editor-in-chief. In 2024 she lived with her husband in Brno.
