Bohumil Flemming

“I had two classmates from secondary school, Felix Kohn and Věra Frishmanová. Felix was even a member of Sokol, but the whole family died, unfortunately. I remember seeing Věra when she began wearing the star, and I would normally stand on the platform with Věra and chat. She told me: ‘I’m surprised you’re not afraid to talk to me now that I’ve got the star.’ I told her that nothing has changed between us and that we were still friends and that I hoped she would survive it all. She was working at some workshop in Smíchov, but they locked the whole family up soon after. Věra was a single child for a long time and her father wanted another child. He longed to have another one, and before they locked them up, his wish was fulfilled. People called him the happy father. Except that they locked them up afterwards. When the war ended, the only one to return was old Mr Frishman. He came home, rang on the doorbell, and some stranger came to open the door. He collapsed. So the happy father was the only one to survive of the whole family. But I think he didn’t live for long.”

“We left to the congress in Moscow, and the next day my friends came rushing up, they had a radio receiver, and they said: ‘Look, Christ Jesus, COMECON [Council for Mutual Economic Assistance] soldiers, that is Soviet Union soldiers are entering the country, but both the bureau of the central committee and the government declared that no one had invited them. That it’s an occupation.’ I felt responsible for our delegation because I was a government envoy, I had brought those people there. So I went to Minister Korčák and told him we should do something. What if we set up a party committee? He refused that. So we have to create some group which will be able to take council on the matter and which will head things here in some way. So I suggested a task force comprising myself, him, and representatives of the main areas in the delegation, which would be someone from energetics, someone from industry, engineering, someone from agriculture, and some university professor. The minister agreed to this, and so we created a task force.”