Alexandra Krejčová

"I remember as a girl, but I had to be in that national school, so it was the third grade. They went to court here, and up on the court steps stood Maresiev. We were down on the sidewalk, not only us from the Beroun school, but also the people just passing by. I don't know on what occasion he was here, but I can see him completely before his eyes, standing there, black coat, dark hair, if they were black, brown, I don't know, but dark. Then we saw the movie and I was really moved. When he has no legs and he walked, it was probably not that visible on him. He must have been clumsy, I don't know. In the movie we saw, then he himself said the moment when the other war pilots asked him that it was cold in those cabins, and he didn't particularly put on much clothes, how he did it. And so he pulled out his pants and they saw that he had wooden legs. It was a tremendous effort for him to return to that war and to fight again."

"We had to practice Spartakiads. School management, in the second grade it was done by PE teachers without any doubt, and in the first grade they always appointed someone who was in charge of younger students. I was always in charge of the boys because they thought I was sharper, so I also supervised the boys in the second grade. I had to be tougher somehow. Although I was tougher, I never managed to practice the Spartakiad at all. The kids didn't want to, so it occurred to me that the boys were boycotting it. They practiced with red flying saucers, today you throw it to dogs or to each other. I had sixteen boys to train with. Unfortunately, we went to rehearsals, it turned out that we didn't even count to sixteen, we were two people short. They didn't do it properly, so bad. The problem was that I was summoned to ONV, and there I was reprimanded for not practicing Spartakiad. I understand it from their position, but on the other hand I was sorry, I was so overwhelmed, they didn't want to go. I also flew to their houses to go to the children, but they just didn't go."