Jiří Fic

"When Yuri Gagarin flew, that day is so etched in my head. We were very excited. It was April 14, 1961, we were sitting like this in school and a teacher was giving us a lecture and suddenly on the radio, in every class there was such a big radio, suddenly someone, whether it was the principal or some teacher, it was announced that the first cosmonaut had flown into space Yuri Gagarin and our teacher, who happened to be there, started to rejoice so incredibly and flew to the principal's office. And we didn't really know what was going on, but we did not know much what was going on. But only after that, the next day, the big pictures came out, photos of Gagarin."

"By the way, I was at Palach's funeral in Prague. There were five of us and we drove behind the school, carrying a wreath. I know that we came to Prague and wanted to go to the center where the coffin was, but they didn't let us in there. There were so many people there. The university students just stood there, holding hands like this and acting like barriers and said: 'Not here.' That was not even possible for so many people."