"It was during the holidays in August. I remember that the atmosphere was tense, uneasy. Mothers, women, went shopping to stock up for their families. People talked about it everywhere, in the corridors, all around the house. We, the children, also perceived this tense atmosphere and the worries of our parents, because, of course, our parents didn't keep it all to themselves, nor did our neighbours. What I remember most is this: we had a neighbour who looked a bit like Alexander Dubček. When he decided to go to Brno and find out what was going on, because you could find out more information in a bigger city, we were afraid that they would lock him up and keep him there."
"We saw the video with our own eyes, during a disco at the Věšák Studio, where they showed us a police intervention against students on Národní třída. It was agreed upon, there and then, that we had to involve the inhabitants of Jaroměř and take matters into our own hands. There were quite a lot of people there, so the parade that began to form on Sunday, November 26 in Jaroměř and moved towards the square was quite large. We didn't think that so many people waving their Czechoslovak flags would participate. We walked all the way to the main square. The members of the Hi-fi club were in charge of the sound system that they had installed very quickly on the square. There were a lot of speakers, a lot of people came with the parade. The November actions continued the next day with a general strike."
"The enthusiasm was so great that it was impossible to go back to how it was before. There was no turning back, and everything happened so quickly. Because even in the beginning, between November 20th and 24th, no repressive forces or the army were deployed against the demonstrators, of whom there were indeed a lot (up to hundreds of thousands in Prague) and because of what was happening in neighbouring countries, where they succeeded in overthrowing socialist regimes and establishing democracies, and because we were young, we believed that everything would end well. The cherry on the top was the cancellation of the fourth article of the constitution on the leading role of the party. I think that was pivotal in showing that things were really changing in the right direction, and that they would not be reversed."
Olga Mertlíková, née Kalová, was born on August 26, 1955 in Brno. She lived with her parents and younger sister in Kuřim, where she went to primary school. Her mother came from a farming family that lost its farm after 1948. During the August 1968 occupation, she felt anxious and afraid. She graduated from a grammar school in Tišnov and then studied history and archival science at the University of Brno. In 1979, she graduated and married Pavel Mertlík. They had a daughter and a son. They lived in Jaroměř, where they co-founded a film club in the eighties. In the Věšák Studio in Jaroměř, on November 24, 1989, she saw footage of the police intervention on Národní třída. Her husband and her co-organized the first demonstration in Jaroměř on November 26, 1989. She stood at the founding of the Civic Forum in Jaroměř. In 1990, her husband became the mayor of Jaroměř and she became the director of the city museum, where the Civic Forum newsletters were printed. She ran the museum for twenty-six years, published several publications about Josefov and Jaroměř. In 2022, she lived in Jaroměř.
