"Well, it's a fact that the then comrade headmaster came to the grammar school once a month and the boys had to face the blackboard. And he measured our hair with a ruler. And it was just unfortunate that there were no T-shirts, yeah. There were really only the shirts. And we were always pulling out the hair, making this big neck. Sometimes, when we could do it, the girls would have hairspray, so they'd give us a little twist. Well, now and then, unfortunately, we had to go to the barber during class, come on. Well, whatever"
"I still remember the morning. My brother Zdenek was tuning the radio, and still nothing could be caught. Because you didn't know that in advance, in the evening you knew there was some kind of exercise. And he said, 'That's impossible!' And now the door opened and my aunt came flying in. She was crying, 'War started!' I said, 'How? How is there a war?' 'We've been occupied by the Russians!' I remember that my brother was then, studying second year, I think, medicine. He said, 'I won't let it happen!' He took a knife. I said, 'Jesus, Zdenek, for God's sake!' Anyway, we went to breakfast and we went to see. Well, when we got out - they were living by the park, and that was just a short walk from the centre. So we went downtown and by then you could see the tanks. It was horrible. There was always one of these soldiers coming out, aiming at people, 'Tu-du-du-du,' and then into people again. Well, there was fear. Well, then we went to the square, so there the Russians always ran into the street light pole, knocked it over and tried to come back at the people. Well, I had this terrible experience when there was this old, I call it a grandmother, an old lady, walking down the street. And now a Russian came out and shot at her. I don't know if he killed her, but anyway, he shot her. I still have that tucked away in my heart to this day. So nobody can erase that."
"In first grade we had a poster of a miner on the wall. And at that time the teacher said -comrade teacher- that it was the most beautiful profession, the miner. And that he brings, brings the best to society, the black gold. I came home and I said, 'Dad, I'm going to be a miner!' And I got a gentle slap on the lips. And I wondered why. And I didn't find out until I was in third grade, which is... They didn't want to say too much in front of me."
"Well, the worse thing was that I... then I was playing - because there was a Soviet garrison in Bystřice, and quite a big one. And there were beautiful courts in that facility, and there was always a netball tournament played there with the All-Russian Football Federation. Well, I never played it. I always made the excuse that I was commuting and I couldn't make it in the morning, and then towards the end I said I wasn't playing with the occupiers. And then there was something else with my hair, so then two months later I was out. That was just about May, I think, May 1989."
Jaromír Mikeš was born on 11 February 1955 in Přílepy near Holešov into a family of teachers. His family background influenced his lifelong love of theatre, music and scouting. His father Jaromír Mikeš was imprisoned in Jáchymov for two years in the 1950s. The then 13-year-old Jaromír lived through the occupation by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968 in Ostrava with his aunt and uncle. He saw with his own eyes a Soviet soldier shooting a random passer-by. At the beginning of the 1970s, he entered a grammar school in Kroměříž. He read forbidden literature, from Jaroslav Foglar to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and began to form hard rock bands influenced by the Western works of Deep Purple and Uriah Heep. After graduating from high school, he wanted to go to JAMU in Brno, but due to his father’s past, this was not possible. After two years of postgraduate studies, he graduated in special education in Olomouc. He completed the war as an unreliable in Belčice in Blatno. Because of his anti-regime views and musical activities, he was interrogated by the State Security. He was then fired from his job at the diagnostic institute in Bystřice pod Hostýnem. The Velvet Revolution found him in Slovakia in a maringota, where he worked as a labourer. After returning to Hulin, he joined the Civic Forum.
