Irina Juřinová

“Whoever was able and still had strength brought their dead relatives to the cemetery. Dad’s factory nailed us together a wooden coffin. So we put my dad on a sledge – every Russian family up north has one – and brought him there on foot. We had those food stamps for January with us. There, we found some clerk along huge, wide ditches, some 10 meters broad and 25 meters wide – several of these in a row. I could see cars driving in and dumping the completely frost bodies into these ditches.”

„I was on a business trip to East Germany with the head of our pedagogy department. A German man invited me to dance. I went to dance with him but I held a stiff posture. I just couldn’t get it out of my head: ‚Who are you dancing with? Oh God, who are you dancing with?‘ It was deep inside me even if I couldn’t have presented it publicly there. It was really terrible, you see. Even though Germans were normal people and he himself was probably also just a kid during the war – that man. But it was so deep inside me, you see? As if it were a sin for me to dance with this German guy.“

“Down there in Všehrdova street – I have to go check what is in there these days – there was a tiny shop which belonged to an elderly couple. They sold éclairs filled with cream and with whipped cream on top. Karel bought me one, this is just who I am. It was really a treat. I was looking down on them because we had our window just above their shop, and said: ‘How come they live there alone, those two?’ And Karel replied: ‘Well, they’ve had it like this for some twenty or thirty years.’ That they owned it for ages. And I said: ‘Is it private?’ He said: ‘Well, such a small shop – the state couldn’t take care of it. So yes, it’s theirs.’ I said: ‘So, they are capitalists?’ He replied: ‘Call them capitalists, if you wish. But they are businesspeople.’ So this is how I first spotted a capitalist shop in Všehrdova street.”