“It is true that except for those temporary jobs on the state farm, we went somewhere by bus once, and only once. We formed pairs in the class–we were in about the seventh grade–and we visited those villages. We were supposed to always go to the family and explain to the farmers how advantageous it is to be in the JZD [Unified agricultural cooperative – trans.]. Well, it turned out horribly. We had no idea what agriculture was. We did not know if the farmer had cattle, what kind of cattle he had, how much grain he had, or how many fields he had. And we had to explain to him the advantages of working somewhere collectively. They all kicked us out, of course.”
"So that I wouldn't have to carry a pile of books home from the library, I used to spend the night at the Ke Karlovu clinic and study there. Suddenly someone starts knocking on the door of my room at night. I open it, and it is a nurse from the ward. I tell her, ‘I'm not on duty.’ And she says, ‘We are being occupied. The mothers of the patients have a radio here. The Russians invaded us.’ And there was a dead-end street Sokolská, where the tram number 6 had its terminus. I went out in front of the clinic, and Sokolská Street was full of tanks. The tanks could not go any further or back up. Then the director came there in the morning and another colleague from a different clinic who studied in the Soviet Union, so she spoke Russian very well. She kept calling out to them, 'Tovarišči, dětskaja bolnica, dětskaja bolnica!’ [Comrades, children's hospital, children's hospital! – trans.], and they couldn't do anything. Then I stayed at the clinic for about four days because no one came there. Both the patients and the doctors were afraid to travel across Prague."
“When I was studying grammar school after the year 1948–I was about fifteen years old–he came to me because he worked there in the party organization and said, ’Look, we're going to have a float at the May Day celebration. We have to make a banner for it.’ I remember that to this day. ‘You go to that grammar school, you can write well, so paint a banner for us and write–’ which really upset me at the time ‘–write that we will make twelve tons of grain extra.’ Well, it was a JZD [Unified agricultural cooperative – trans.] banner. I told him, 'OK, I'll write it.’ And then he says, ‘You know what? Don’t write that; write fifteen tons.’ I thought to myself, twelve tons or fifteen tons, that's a big difference. In the end, it didn’t happen at all. The gentleman realized it would be strange for such a small village to supply such a large ration. So we didn't write anything.”
Lidka Lisá, née Vynikalová, was born on 8 May 1933 in Jičín and grew up as an only child in the village of Podhradí. When she was ten years old, the Gestapo took her mother, Růžena Vynikalová, away from her home. They released her within a day because it was a coincidence of names. After finishing elementary school, Lidka transferred to the Jičín grammar school, where she experienced teaching under the protectorate, between 1945 and 1948 and after the February coup. Then she and her classmates had to visit the villages and promote entering the Unified agricultural cooperative (JZD). She briefly studied medicine in Olomouc and lived with her aunt, whose husband was a political prisoner. Between 1952 and 1957, she graduated from the Faculty of Pediatrics in Prague. She was assigned to Trutnov but also worked in Žacléř. After returning to Prague in 1960, she worked at children’s clinics in Vinohrady and Ke Karlovu Street, where she also survived the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops. She attended the funeral of Jan Palach. She refused to join the Communist Party and was banned from teaching at the faculty after a background check. She briefly worked as the senior doctor of the children’s department in Jičín. In 1972, she became a docent and the head of the endocrinology department in Prague. She was appointed professor of paediatrics in 1993. In 2022, she lived in Jičín and worked on the Ethics Committee of the Motol University Hospital.
