Ing., Arch. Jan Klimeš

“I had to explain his (Jan Palach´s) actions to myself, why he had done it, what meaning it had. We were already university students; we were not stupid and discussed it from dawn till dusk. We understood the meaning of his actions very quickly and we organized two buses from Brno to Prague. I attended his funeral and was standing on the Old Town Square where there were an estimated eighty thousand people. You could have heard a pin drop and when the procession was marching through the square, you could only hear the shuffling of feet and walking. A complete silence and as a poet wrote it was a deafening silence. That is accurate. It was a profound experience.”

“My mum was invited to see various flats. The door opened, and there were beds made, candlesticks, and photos of grandparents, parents and children on the walls, and my mum said she did not feel up to it and had to leave. That was a general reaction. People refused to move in there (to the houses left behind by Germans). So, they did so-called collections in a local cinema. They put beds on one side and tables on the other, and people could buy them for five or ten crowns and furnish their houses again. The feeling of belonging disappeared, and it no longer mattered those had been German houses."