Vlasta Macháčková

“Two Gestapos came to me, one was a Czech, I call [that type] distorted... the other was a German... So I showed them into my room. And I say to myself, Vlasta, get a grip, keep your head, calm... just be calm. They said how come, if you got the application form, you got it three times, how come you didn’t join, you didn’t sign it. I said I hadn’t. That was this Czech... I called it a Czech Hitlerjugend. I said, well no, I didn’t join, I’m a Czech girl, I don’t understand it. Well, you were also active in Sokol. I said I had been. That was a normal organisation of ours, so why shouldn’t I have been. Yes but you were very active. I said, well, I was, like everyone else. Yes but you also organised things. I said, well, I organised training sessions. They were getting angry. Of course, they didn’t have any results yet. Yes but you also have a family. Well, I do, but we’re not in touch. Siblings? I said yeah, I had a sister, she died. And no brother? I said no. They looked at each other. But I was strong. Really, I was trying as hard as I could. They started all over again, all kinds of questions. As he turned the pages, there was a summary there, I saw it, and he had ‘politically dangerous’ written there in German. Well, and so the gentlemen took their leave. Poor Mum, she came running up, caught hold of me, we sat down side by side, we hugged and shivered, and I cried, and cried, and cried, and I couldn’t do anything at all. I broke down, you see.”

“Originally, I judged people for giving into it, for being spineless, so to say. But most of them did it to protect - the parents to protect the children, so they could study, and [the parents] themselves to keep their jobs. Because as soon as you diverged just a bit, they either locked you up, or they suspended you from places such as that of university teacher, and they forced you into the working class. And the interesting thing was that it was the same as during the Protectorate, even this second state of things, excuse me for calling it so, I hope no will mind... we were the Protectorate of the Soviet Union. And you could feel that everywhere, in every culture, in the political transformation. There were also people who [collaborated] for their own benefit. Both under Hitler and under Socialism. They were servile. I think those people lost their spines in some way one day and never found them again.”