"The factory was, of course, nationalised, and it was then called Zadrev, not Václav Kratochvíl. Then it had several other names over the years until November, or the names of the companies had different locations and ended up as UP Bučovice. Then it went into restitution, but that is another chapter. He was simply sentenced to twelve years sometime in the second half or early second half of the fifties. His health was already pretty bad, he was doing his time in Leopoldov. That was a prison known for not being too hard on anyone. So he died in that prison."
"That was during the holidays, of course, on August 21. I went to work at the site of today's French Gymnasium at Pasteurova Street in Olomouc. There was an STS, a workshop, where my father arranged for me to go there over the holidays for a part-time job. So I got up in the morning, we all met in the kitchen where we had a dining table. We're looking out the window and the noise... and fighter jets flying over the house and the garden. Well, that was clear, I don't know if my father already knew from the radio he might have put on in the morning, we just knew they were Russian planes. High up, tiny little dots, you couldn't see any stars, but there was still that radio news. So suddenly we knew there was a splash with the Prague Spring and with Dubček. Especially my father's chin dropped, because he was feeding his party, he was some kind of chairman of the all-trade committee, so he went around all the villages around Olomouc. He was always somewhere at meetings instead of at home."
"I graduated with a Matura exam in German, which was completely unexpected for our Russian teacher. I had to work really hard to catch up on German. Meanwhile, I can say that I knew Russian very well. I could have passed the exam in Russian with my eyes closed and gotten a top grade, whereas with German, I really had to study hard and ended up with a 'B'. But in 1970, anyone who could, in any way, express an anti-Soviet stance—there’s no better way to put it—wouldn't have chosen Russian. By that time, I was already proud enough that I refused to take the exam in Russian. So I did everything I could to pass German decently."
Otto Schneider was born on 17 March 1952 in Přerov as Otto Fidor to his parents Otilia, née Kratochvilová and Milan Fidor. His mother came from the family of Václav Kratochvíl, who owned a wooden products factory in Moravičany, and Otilia Kratochvílová, daughter of Alois Wessels, the founder of the Loštice tvarůžky production. Václav Kratochvíl’s factory was nationalised after 1948 and its owner was sentenced to twelve years in prison in a mock trial. He died during his sentence in Leopoldov. Otto’s father was a leading Czech optometrist. The marriage could not withstand his work commitment and his parents divorced. His mother later married a former classmate, František Schneider, whose surname Otto eventually adopted. As the daughter of a factory worker, after 1948 she was only allowed to work as a housekeeper and later as a storekeeper. After graduating from the general secondary school, Otto successfully passed the talent exams at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Brno University of Technology, majoring in architecture. During his studies, he and other classmates were at the birth of the softball and baseball club, which was incorporated into the VŠTJ Technika Brno in 1971. He graduated in 1976. He co-founded the same club after his return to Olomouc. In 1980 he got married. With his wife Jarmila, née Skalická, they raised two children. In the second half of the 1980s he was a member of the Olomouc City Construction Commission and the City Council, and in 1989 -1990 a member of the Olomouc City Council. Until 1991 he worked as a designer in Stavoprojekt, then he started his own business. In 2023 he lived in Olomouc.
