Marie Rychlíková

“He was the chairperson of the Social Democratic Party and the (idea) of the merger of the communists and socialists came. My dad was the chairperson. I can still hear him as today, I was lying there broken in plaster and dad said: ‘The merger is going to take place on 25 June. I will present the members during the merger of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party in the pub U Vávrů. But the three of us are not going to be admitted. They are going to expel me, a Mr. Sátora and I do not know who will be the third one. I am going to present the members but I am not going to become a communist because they had decided that they do not want me.‘ My dad died on 25 June at half-past two in the afternoon. He was forty-nine years old. He got tetanus in the afternoon on the day when he was supposed to hand it over. He was forty-nine years old when he died.” - “And what did Mr. Vítek say at his funeral?” - The Reverend said... I did not attend the funeral as I was lying in the plaster at home. My mum said that the Reverend said that it was not a funeral but a demonstration of people. So many people came there, the graveyard was full, and there were buses there. My dad was a really great personality. And Mr. Vítek said over his grave, my mother repeated it word for word: ‘Friends let us bow our heads, we are burying the last social democrat.‘ My dad died in the afternoon as a social democrat and all of them were communists by the evening.”