"There was a plane overhead. Well, what was it, 100 metres above us, wasn't it. And he was looking down, he saw movement down there. He knew shit about football, because he was an American, he knew shit about football, but that's how he researched it. And we, like assholes, we just stayed standing there looking up at him, right. And we were waiting to see what was going to happen. And he saw, he got down lower, we were looking at him, and he made one more arc to the track, and he got on top of us, and so he saw a bunch of guys, right, kind of scruffy, he could tell from that little height, and he waved at us, and he took off. And we were like, 'Hey, that was a black guy!' He wasn't a black guy, but he had black, all Americans had, airmen, they had black overalls."
"I witnessed the event, which is depicted, among other things, on a small memorial, on a small plaque at the Rous factory. The boys who were captured, they were very hungry, they were not fed at all and it was forbidden to give them food. One lady, Mrs Kominíková Dvořáková, I remember, I was standing there by the road as the stream was going, threw them bread. The bread fell into the slush, into snow slush. Two boys bent down to get it, a German soldier came and shot them both. They have a memorial there, two unknown people were shot here. I was there, I was standing there, because I was always staying somewhere. And the path of those prisoners was littered with these dead bodies."
"I experienced what I never did afterwards, which was to see a teacher stand on the podium in front of the class and burst into tears, which is not a common reaction in a male, and in this case we understand it. We were sent home because there was no class that day. They were just asked to keep calm, not to shout at the soldiers, not to show anything that would be a reaction to what had occurred in the streets. The next day was different. That was when I saw German soldiers stuffing themselves in the confectionery shop U Řezníčků with products of Czech cuisine, Czech confectioners, which they apparently missed in the Reich."
Robert Kvaček was born on 5 July 1932 in Dvorce in the Jičín region, after a few years the family moved to Jičín. His younger brother tragically died of rat poison in a dessert, Robert himself survived the poisoning. After the war he graduated from the Lepař Gymnasium in Jičín and then studied history at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. He was led to study history by formative experiences during the war, such as the violent death of his friend’s father. He remained at Charles University all his life, but he also taught at other institutions. By the 1960s, his professional reputation had already crossed the borders of Czechoslovakia. The first book he wrote, however, led him to a clash with State Security. In the 1960s he also worked with Czechoslovak Radio. After 1968 he was threatened with expulsion from the university, but in the end he was only banned from lecturing on the 20th century and could not publish in the 1970s. In the 1980s, he could at least write under a pseudonym. In the early 1970s his wife died and he had to take care of his six-year-old son alone. He did not remarry until many years later. After 1989 he was appointed professor at Charles University. He became a member of the Czech-Slovak Commission of Historians and the Pekař Society of the Bohemian Paradise. He received many awards for his work, such as the Gold Medal of the Charles University and the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize for Non-Fiction. With his retirement he returned to Jičín. Professor Robert Kvaček died on 27 April 2024.
Vojtěch Ježek, Hana Vagenknechtová, Adam Kozák, Natálie Spurná a Tereza Šindlářová ze 4. ZŠ Železnická, Jičín, pod vedením paní učitelky Daniely Havelkové
