Svatava Hejralová

"It was played even during the war. The plays had to be approved, they had to be accompanied by a German translation, the posters were bilingual, only what they allowed was played. Then, after the fifty-first year, it was the same. You could only play what the Communists allowed. And that still had to be reported - as I say, like in the Protectorate. It had to be announced who was playing, what they were playing, when they were going to rehearse, from what time to what time. Not like today, we have rehearsals, maybe four a week, or we'll add more. That didn't exist then. If my parents wanted to add a rehearsal, it had to be announced: and why is this one playing and shouldn't it be played by the other one instead? I already know that from the stories about the Hejral family, but they didn't give up. Or, of course, they did make concessions. Such that every once in a while a game was chosen to close the mouths of the critics so that the operetta could be played, or the other way around, a band was made. For the October Revolution, for Midsummer's Day and for Victory February. Then there was a band for the rally. Someone from the theatre always had to introduce it. We'd cut who was going to do what: one of us would recite the opening poem, the other would introduce. And then we'd have the path cleared and we could have the operetta. That's how it was. I know that after the revolution, after the nineties, the younger generation blamed us for serving them and such. It wasn't pleasant either. But they didn't know shit. That if they hadn't done that pandering, the theater wouldn't have been played here a long time ago."

"The sixty-eighth year, August twenty-first, found me at a children's camp in Železnice. And it's such an interesting thing: the day before we had a Day of Friendship with the soldiers, with the military garrison from Jičín. So we were surrounded by all our soldiers who had served there. We learned how to shoot and I don't know what all. They showed us the equipment, all day long. The whole of that 20th of August was devoted to the camaraderie with the soldiers from Jičín and that garrison. We woke up at night, and the planes started flying. In the morning we woke up, it was a camp outside the city. There were fields, and suddenly there were tanks and the leaders were all crying and nothing was happening. Breakfast - who wanted to, there was no order, just watching TV. We only learned that the tanks that were around us, they weren't the tanks of our friends from Jicin. On the contrary, there were perhaps Polish tanks. We were there for three days before we were evacuated home by buses. All I remember from that was how all the girls were crying terribly, how the guys were clenching their fists, being angry, swearing, until we understood what had happened. And we didn't understand until the bus ride home from Jicin, when they were worried about whether we would even get home. Everywhere under Jizerka, there were soldiers everywhere, here and there a car was knocked down. It was full at Kroupy. I just remember the fear and the terribly unpleasant feeling, the frightening feeling, as if one didn't know what was happening, how to behave. Nothing. That's what I remember from this."