Sylvia Klánová

„Mum herself said about her work, the sculptural group of Lidice children, that it was a work of heart, work of brain and work of hands. Maximum work. In short, that a person cannot possibly work more than that, that it was an altar of the greatest human work in the best sense of the word. A work so hard because she had to re-live the stories of those children again and again. My mum, when working on the sculpture, had to absorb all the pain of Lidice mothers, she had to re-live the entire tragedy of Lidice. The heartfelt wish of Lidice mothers was that she would create a piece to honor the memory of their children. Memorial to the Children Victims of the War, as she called the sculpture and which she took as her life-long peace act. And she created it with the idea of never ever forgetting the most innocent of war’s victims – kids. A so that nothing similar would ever happen again. And I can cite her own words: ‘In the name of peace, I return the eighty-two children of our nation to their home plain, as a warning symbol of the millions of dead children killed in pointless human wars.’”

„In 1969 came the crucial day. My mum was living in Prague-Hodkovičky at that time. She was home alone. It was the All Souls’ Day time, 1st or 2nd of November and my mum was remembering the child victims of wars. She reminded herself that she had promised them a memorial and hadn’t done it yet. And that all other graves had candles lit up, all but the graves of the thirteen million child victims of wars from 35 countries of the world. That no candles were lit up on these children’s graves, because they in fact had no graves. And if she was to light up candles for all the millions, the first one lit would be long gone at the time of lighting up the last one. And that it simply wasn’t possible to light up millions of candles. And then she remembered the happy childhood she had had, spending time with grandma and grandpa on Nicholas cemetery in Pilsen and how there was a special children section with abandoned graves. And mum and her brother and cousins had often been playing there and had put candles on those lonely graves. First it had been a small candle, then a larger one and in the end a whole bunch of candles. And at that moment mum had the idea to symbolize the thirteen million child victims with one specific war crime of the many, the one executed on the 82 children of Lidice, aged 1 to 16. And she couldn’t stay home alone with that thought. She began walking from Prague-Hodkovičky all the way to Lidice. The trip was about twenty kilometers long… It was early evening when she started the trail she had known very well, because of the student peace walks at the time. Which is why she had known all about the children of Lidice, she had been really interested in that issue. She knew they were children of the nation; she knew their numbers: eighty-two Lidice children – forty-two girls and forty boys. And on her way to Lidice she asked herself what she had been thinking, that it would be a workload for three human lives, that it would take about ten years of her life – in the end it was about twenty… And that such a sculpture on the Lidice plain would probably have to be a heroic sculpture. And when she finally reached Lidice, it was a relief.”

„My mother was deeply touched by the stories [of the murder of Lidice’s children] and told her parents she would spend the night with her grandma at the Nicholas cemetery in Pilsen. Her grandpa Alois Seidler was the caretaker there, he also looked after the St. Nicolas church – the Seidler family had had ancestors in Pilsen for three decades. There’s a famous grave of Josef Kajetán Tyl in the Nicholas cemetery… And in 1945, when my mother was twenty-one, she spent a balmy May night by J. K. Tyl’s tomb. She said that nightingales were singing all night long, by the morning it was thousands of them singing and my mum declared a war to war by that tomb so dear to the nation. She swore she would tell the entire world the suffering of children during war years. She had been so touched by the story, that she kept thinking how and in which way could she, an unknown girl from a small country, tell the world something like that. And then she figured that the closest to her heart is the art of sculpture. Back then she studied with the Pilsen sculptor Otakar Walter and was already fascinated with the art. And she said that even a blind man can touch a sculpture and that the art of sculpture speaks clearly in all world languages. And that exactly with through the art of sculpture she could remember the child victims of the war, be it the second world war or any other war. And with that decision she entered the next phase of her life.”