"In the 1970s it was all about career. In the 1950s it was about survival, people being arrested, expropriated, thrown out of schools. In the 1970s, people were forced to comment on the entry of Soviet troops. Those who disagreed were in trouble at work. So people avoided answering directly yes or no. But there was no more brutal violence. People were losing jobs, losing careers, not being able to go abroad, and sometimes losing property. It was moderate, although unpleasant, because the freedom was not there." -"Did it affect you too?" - "Not really. I didn't outwardly oppose the regime. It's hard to be a hero with four children and one job. My wife was at home with the children. There was nowhere to put them, no grandmothers, no nursery. So I had to support the family. So to be a dissident... that's the moral problem that the true dissidents condemn as cowardice. Being a hero is sometimes hard."
"There were eight boys in our class, but four of them were in the party or in some communist youth club. And they terrorized not only us, but also the teachers. The teachers were afraid of them. At that time there was a Marxism-Leninism class, and those teachers were terrified. We graduated in union shirts. Only one of us didn't put the shirt on, and he didn't pass. There was an assessor, a boy from our street of working-class origin, and he made all sorts of strange comments."
"The Revolutionary Guards emerged, they were these strange people who were dressed in beige uniforms and had RG on their sleeves. People who had done nothing during the war came out of the holes too and then they took revenge. I'd say they were scum. They took sadistic revenge on anyone. First of all, against the Germans who lived here, but they also forced children to dismantle barricades and repair sidewalks. They painted swastikas on their backs, beat them and threw paving stones at them. Once they brought in an old lady in a dressing gown. She was a Czech, but she was a German teacher. During the war, everybody needed to know German. They beat her and tore up her dressing gown. I don't know what happened to her. I heard that they threw them into the Vltava River and shot them. Such things were happening. This was done by the lumpenproletariat."
Pavel Kulhánek was born on 2 September 1932 in Prague into the family of a bank clerk Vladimír Kulhánek and his wife Marie. His father worked in the Czech Bank Eskomptní during the war, his mother was fully deployed and worked in Křižík’s factories as a secretary. Pavel Kulhánek recalls especially the details of the war years in Smíchov. They lived near the Palacký Bridge, which was destroyed during the air raids in February 1945. He recalls everyday life under the Protectorate, the Prague Uprising and the horrific images of revenge against the German civilian population. He attended the Zatlanka school, and after the war he entered the grammar school in Drtinova Street, where the daughter of the executed Milada Horáková also studied at that time. He was significantly influenced by his classmate Jiří Němec, later a philosopher and dissident, who led him to the path of faith. Pavel Kulhánek was baptized in 1953, and then he ministered at religious ceremonies. From 1951 to 1956, he graduated from the Czech Technical University, worked at the State Institute of Transport Design and then at Metrostav. In 1958 he married Eva, they had an official and church wedding, and raised four children.
