Ludmila Cibulková

"I came out of school in Bolevec and there I used to recite [a poem at a school assembly]. I think I might have had a little bit of acting. There was an amateur theatre group where I acted. And sometimes there were people there who understood it, who maybe were already working for television at that time. They said I had quite a gene for it. I was quite good at acting and I enjoyed it. So when I applied to go to a junior acting school in Prague, it came very strictly that I shouldn't mention that I probably wouldn't get anywhere at all. That there would be a vote of the teachers at the school, if I could [go] to the construction industry school, which at that time had a requirement for children to apply for entrance exams there. So I ended up taking the entrance exam there, and since I was fifth in the whole [admissions] process, I ended up getting in. But I want to go back to that experience. There was a People's House [in Bolevec], which was then demolished as part of the communications, and in that People's House there were not only performances of that amateur theatre, but also various quite beautiful events from the school. There was a clever teacher there who knew how to put it all together. I once performed a poem there. It wasn't Majakovský, [I don't] remember, but it was definitely a Czech poet. And I guess I gave it so enthusiastically or so nicely, I don't know, I put in what I knew as a child, but immediately it came to the school from the local [košuteckých] and Bolevec communists that I, the child of an enemy of the socialist establishment, had something to present there and that it should never happen again."

"We had no idea. Mum probably had no idea that Dad would be capable of signing up for something like this at all, despite his dislike of the regime. Because he was of a terribly peaceful nature and therefore had no cells at all for such an activity. Nevertheless, on January 16, 1952, when I was nine years old, not yet ten, I was lying in my bed in the morning. In the kitchen where we slept, because it was quite cold in January, men in leather coats appeared, looking at me in my bed. There was a little radio above me, and they were looking at that too, to see what station might be on. And I caught one last glimpse, in my memories I have, of dad's loden coat in the hallway and then the slamming of the car door outside. The banging was quite distinct, because there weren't many cars before. And I didn't see my father again."