“I never had the SSM shirt, and I never needed it. I graduated from the Santoška in Smíchov, and we wore casual clothes in school and nobody had a blue shirt on during the school-leaving exams. But we found out the blue shirts were required on other occasions. We as high school students along with our teachers were called on to take part in a mass meeting in Old Town Square. Comrade Kaganovich, a top representative of Moscow’s politbureau who was very close to Stalin and perhaps even a distant relative of his, was supposed to speak there. A very important person. I remember going to the meeting – we were just a bunch, not marching in twos, approaching the square. An organiser stopped us in one of the narrow Old Town streets leading to the square and asked: ‘Where are you going, comrades?’ We said, ‘To the meeting. Comrade Kaganovich is here.’ He says: ‘No, you cannot. You can only join the meeting with blue shirts on.’ We did not know what to say, then one of us, the bravest of us and like our informal leader, said: ‘Well, his loss, boys. Let’s go.’ And we went back. He actually suggested that Comrade Kaganovich missed out on something because we were not admitted to the meeting without blue shirts. In fact, as we were going home – I think it was in Husova Street – all I could think about was, ‘What would our teacher think seeing us not going to the meeting?’ I looked to the side and saw our teacher on the opposite walkway, rushing in the same direction as us – that is, away from the meeting, going back home, with his head bowed down. So, this is how it all worked back then.”
“The radio played a huge role then because there was no TV or anything. The ‘normal’ radio could not broadcast at first. I think they were just not prepared in the morning on the fifth of May. People were listening in the streets to what was going on. And they would hop on trams and go to help by the radio building, and in the evening they started dismantling the paving. People, including children, made like bucket brigades and handed each other the paving bricks to build a barricade, and it was quite heavy for some of the children. Sure, they used whatever they could in building the barricades – whatever they found in the backyards or gardens, old junk and so on. We welcomed and shook hands with the Vlasov people in Smíchov, since it was the western end of Prague, the next morning. They wore Nazi uniforms, so initially there was some hesitation as to whether they are Nazis.”
“My father was rather dispirited all day on 8 May since he had nothing left to smoke. We went to see grandma to Vinohrady via Jirásek Bridge. He took me along and it was a nice walk in the morning – there was no Red Army yet. Walking the bridge towards grandma, he said, ‘Grandma could have a cigarette hidden somewhere;’ he was looking forward to it. Suddenly, a Nazi started firing what was likely an automatic rifle at the Jirásek Bridge paving from a roof light next to the Dancing House. I think that if he wanted to hit us he could; there was no bitumen at the time, it was stone paving and it flapped unpleasantly. To this day, I still realise how strange it is when bullets hit the paving. Of course, we beat a record as we sprinted to where nobody could hit us from that roof light. Indeed, grandma had something to smoke, but by then tanks were arriving from the other side, from the east from Vršovice along Francouzská Street, and that’s where we shook hands with Red Army soldiers who were cleaning up Prague and were welcomed warmly.”
“The totalitarian dictatorship informally divided people into several groups. On the one side, there were its active partisans who had ideals or ambition, or both, or those who sought peace just to focus on their favourite activity, or those who feared persecution or disadvantages if they refused ‘boarding the elevator to power’. On the opposite side, there were active opponents of the regime, resistance members, people with an anti-regime stance, or maybe young people desiring to relocate abroad in order to avoid unpleasant matters, accusations, military service and so on. Between the two sides, there was a mostly passive grey zone whose members avoided public appearances and any situations where they would be forced to specify their stance towards the regime, since saying either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ could give them problems. The grey zone also included people who were merely apolitical viewers of life, just waiting for decades to see the situation unfolding. Usually, the regime requires a certain degree of involvement, but various individuals have different thresholds or limits. So, in a loyalty test, they suggest how far they are willing to go accommodating the regime and what would be too much for them and downright unacceptable for those around them.”
Vladimír Klíma was born in Prague on 11 February 1936. He spent his childhood in the Protectorate but the war did not really affect his life until towards the end. Aged nine, he witnessed the dramatic events of the Prague Uprising. As a student, he showed a big language talent, so he went on to study English and French at Charles University after high school graduation. Following his military service and his first job as an editor at the Orbis publishing house, he started pursuing his lifelong passion for African culture. In 1966 he joined the Oriental Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and started his graduate studies of African culture. He published many books, studies, articles and translations. He often spoke at international conferences in Czechoslovakia and abroad. He left the Oriental Institute in the 1990s and embarked on a diplomatic career. In 1995 he became the Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Ghana, and later on to Togo and Burkina Faso. He returned to the Czech Republic in 1999 and continued publishing. He chaired the Friends of Africa Society and Africa has remained his passion. He later moved to Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, his wife’s birthplace.
