Zbyněk Illek

"We were preparing a Ukrainian exhibition at the time and the Ukrainians flew to Prague and came by train. One of them stayed in Prague because he was offered an opportunity for exhibition. We welcomed the Ukrainians to our town place and started installing immediately. Sometime around ten o'clock in the evening, the fourth member of the group called the gallery on the phone and told us what was happening in Prague, that the police had beaten up the students. He had been right in Národní třída but left before anything happened, and he said that the atmosphere was perfect and so on. Then he told us what happened after he had left the march. That's how we found out. He came from Prague the next day and said he had some photographs. We were looking for any news in the newspaper. We just found a tiny note in Svobodné slovo. That was the first impulse. The exhibit opened the next day and after that we went to the square to the upper fountain, we put up like four candles along the stone wall, and then we would meet there every late afternoon and after work, and more and more of us started to arrive, and then it was on."

"The people in Aš wanted to do the exhibition in Aš too by all means. They made a selection of the photographs and installed them in Aš. When I came to open the exhibition, I saw right away that it was bad because there were these weird little fellows. When the opening speech was over, the people scattered - the Aš people just disappeared. A few brave ones stayed and so did a few of those guys in coats. They asked 'Why did they photograph this? Why that? What is this photograph supposed to mean?' I tried to explain it to them but their interpretations were wildly different, and that was very unpleasant, so to speak. A few days later, we found out with Mirek Boháč, who was the guarantor for the museum in Cheb, that the exhibition in Aš was to be closed and the book that had been published about it was to be destroyed. We went to Aš, took the books that were in the exhibition's box office and stored the books in the cellar of the then director of the Aš museum, Mr. Borsík. The exhibition was banned the next day; it was closed and the remaining books were confiscated. That's the story. It didn't end at that. Some time later I was picked up by the State Security again. One of the investigators banged the catalogue on the table and said, 'Is this your attitude towards the socialist establishment?' I said there was nothing wrong with that - those were photographs we had taken in Aš and it really looked like that in reality. He said, 'So what about this photo?' It was one taken by Pavel Štecha, a professor at FAMU at that time. It was this 'honour board' by the main road in Aš. It was behind glass, and since it was taken early in the morning, the glass pane got dewy with streams of water running down. One of the factories in Aš was visible behind that with the smokestack sticking up. They interpreted it like the communists in those photographs were meant to be gassed. It was the harshest reading of a photograph I've ever witnessed. There were other things where the guy's interpretation was really... Nobody would have thought of that."

"When my son was three years old, I was first offered to join the party. I said no way because my son was still young and so on. Then my second son was born, so I was happy to continue this excuse. As my second son grew up, though, the pressure increased. Then it became sort of not quite pleasant because I was interviewed by the deputy director, the director, the chairman of the Communist Party organisation and it became downright unpleasant, but I still resisted. Then this thing happened. This was a year after the Spartakiáda, for which I had to train the children of the class I was teaching. We did practices twice a week, rehearsing for the Spartakiáda, and I would come home at five or six o'clock. The only day I had time off in the afternoon was Friday. When the canteen supervision shifts changed, I read on the bulletin board that I would have to oversee the canteen from 1:30 on Fridays. That really annoyed me because there were colleagues who would go home at twelve o'clock all week, they didn't do any extra work, and of course they served in the canteen around half past twelve and then they went home again on Friday. I rebelled; I said I wanted it redone because this was unfair. The deputy director was also the chairman of the communist organisation. She didn't say it directly but she implied that if I were a communist, I probably wouldn't have to oversee the canteen. This made me so angry! I recalled someone in the photography club said that there was a vacancy for a photography, film and art methodologist in the District Culture Centre. I got up that Friday afternoon and went to the District Cultural Centre to ask if the position was open. I met a person there who was locking up, they were just finishing up, but he made me an appointment with the director for Monday. I went there right away at lunchtime on Monday and actually made an agreement with the director that they would wait for me for those two months, and he kept his word. At the end of April, I was leaving the educational system for the District Culture Center."