Věra Fischerová

“The Americans arrived, some of them had to know him from the war, they saw the paintings, and the Fast Arrows, they were looking at all of this and telling him: ´Man, leave it all here and come with us, we’ll give you a villa, just take your three kids and leave it all here, the country will go to hell.´ The Americans already knew it.”

“He was there on some errands (in the Mladý Hlasatel (Young Herald) magazine or in the Melantrich publishing house) and he met my husband and asked him: ´Listen, wouldn’t you like to do some illustrations? I’m now working on something for boys. It’s called Rychlé šípy (Fast Arrows).´ He replied: ´Well, I’ll try.´ But he was not too keen on that, because the work was paid very badly. But he told him: ´All right, I’ll try it.´ He created one page, then another, and it eventually spread like that.”

“They didn’t catch him, but they followed him on the Wenceslas Square. He didn’t drive a car. He was walking over the Wenceslas Square and he sensed that they were after him, he could see it. All of a sudden, somebody whispered to him: ´Run down by the National Theatre, and escape through those lanes there.´ Just imagine it, my husband did it and it saved his life. The other three men were shot and he would have been shot as well.”

“There were not many of us, about ten. I remember that the Pope was short and that he was sitting in a golden armchair. It was right in the Vatican. He granted us absolution and he spoke about something. Daddy understood him, because he had studied a grammar school, where Italian was taught as well, and he could thus understand all languages.”