"It was more his actions that encouraged all his fellow prisoners, because he knew they were young, that they also had young children. Morning after morning they found and collected the corpses. People felt such despair and it went on for such a long time that they themselves were jumping into the wires all around. It helped him that he was a strong believer and that he knew the Bible and had studied it and could apply it well to that terrible situation. That helped those prisoners a lot. After the war, the prisoners sought out his sons, who were now orphans on both sides, and told them how precious and important their dad was to them, that because of him they had survived those terrible hardships and torments."
"That was actually the Sudetenland, Mácha´s lake, where German was spoken mostly, and he [his grandfather Rudolf Forman, at whose instigation Velký rybník was renamed Mácha´s lake] spread the Czech language there. For example, he invited actors from the National Theatre. For example, Haken used to go there and sing the role of the waterman at the lake. My grandfather also led water scouts there and organized scout camps, and my grandmother baked them buns and cakes. And whenever the scouts came around, they would sing songs about grandma under the windows."
"I still didn't know why my mom made those wrist warmers. My grandfather was always wanting wrist warmers. It's a place around the hands, in the wrist, to make it as warm as possible. My grandfather was in a cell about six feet by six feet where two people slept and it was very cold. She was always knitting, even when there was no wool. She was always knitting two sweaters at a time, one for my grandfather and one for Miloš [Forman] to go to Prague because he had no money. For my grandfather she was filling it with lining. She also made another padding lining, which she stuffed in between."
Blahoslava Procházková was born on 7 November 1948 in Česká Lípa. The tragic fate of her maternal and paternal ancestors marked her childhood and the rest of her life. She never knew her paternal grandparents - Rudolf and Anna Forman. Both were arrested by the Gestapo during World War II and ended up in concentration camps, where they died. After the war, the witness’s father Blahoslav Forman and his two younger brothers - director Miloš and artist Pavel - began to take care of the family pension Rut, built by their parents during the First Republic. However, the communist state confiscated the house in 1950. At the same time, the regime imprisoned the witness’s other grandfather Jan Kunášek and sentenced him to ten years in prison. When Blahoslava Procházková was 12 years old, another tragedy befell the family. Her father Blahoslav Forman, who was a teacher in Čáslav at the time, died during a climb up Mount Ďumbier in the Low Tatras. She graduated from the grammar school in Čáslav and later - regardless of her family history - was accepted to study art education and sociology at the Faculty of Education at the University of Hradec Králové. After graduating, she started working in education, where she remained until the Velvet Revolution. After the revolution, she began teaching privately and together with her husband Jan, she worked on the reconstruction of the family guesthouse, which the family regained in restitution. In 2024 Blahoslava Procházková lived in the family villa in Čáslav in Formanova street, named after her grandfather Rudolf.
The Forman family in their house in Čáslav, from left Božena Formanová, Jan Kunášek, Blahoslav Forman, Miloš Forman, Jana Brejchová, Blahoslava Procházková, 1960
The Forman family in their house in Čáslav, from left Božena Formanová, Jan Kunášek, Blahoslav Forman, Miloš Forman, Jana Brejchová, Blahoslava Procházková, 1960
