Antonín Konrády

"When I came back from the war, I came to my uncle Jakub Konrády. And he said, 'Oh, that's good, I have a piper here right now!' I said: 'Please... And what's his name?' - 'Zdeněk Bláha. I said: 'Do you play the bagpipes too?' - 'I played in the army.' I said: 'Me too! And what if we get together?' - 'Well, that would be great!' Well, that's how we started. I've got photographs [of that] in there too, maybe you can show that. So we agreed to play as a bagpipe duo. For two years or so we went round the villages and stuff and we played at various dances. And in 1955, we formed the Konrády Bagpipe Band. Why the name? Because my dad played there, me and my uncle Jakub Konrády, who made the bagpipes. So there were three Konradys, so we said, 'Let's go: Konrády's Bagpipe Music.'"

"I have a story that my dad told me. He was called to the Gestapo in Domažlice, where a certain Mr. 'Pudil' was the chief or spokesman. His name was... spelled [as] 'Pudyl', but we called him 'Pudil' in Czech. He invited my dad to the Gestapo there and said, 'You're going to the concentration camp.' And he said, 'What? What concentration camp? What's that?' - 'Well, you're not coming back from that. And he said, 'Why?' - 'Are you a member of the Radio Club Domažlice?' - 'Yes.' - 'Do you know who Smudek was?' - 'Yes, yes. He was just at my place yesterday and he needed a bell button for me to install it for him.' - 'Because I'm a Sudeten, but I'm not an asshole... You know, because someone thinks I'm an asshole when I'm a Sudeten. You got a report from a Czech! And he took [the denunciation], crumpled it up, threw it in the stove and burned it. And that's how he actually saved dad from the concentration camp. And I want to say that this Pudyl probably helped - as I later learned - several people, Czechs, who might have been in a similar situation. And I can't confirm this, but I heard that the whole family hung themselves on that hill in Domažlice, going to Horšovský Týn. So that's where they were, as they say, 'henkli'."