Petr Schönfeld

"It had one condition, that he had to graduate from the so-called military department during college, from which I was expelled twice. Once because I didn't go. And the second time, because when Lieutenant Colonel Shraut... they always put quite sharply intelligent officers in charge, so that we could see how things were in the army, so when Lieutenant Colonel Šraut was in Motol, where such houses we went to were wooden, so one winter, he was shining flashlights on the backs of our necks, checking if our hair was cut according to regulations—it had to be two centimeters above the collar. Back then, I was wearing what they called a "blanket" haircut, and this really irritated me. So when he shone the flashlight on my neck, I turned around, and because he was shining the light right in my eyes, I couldn’t see him, but I said to him, “You’re a khaki brain.” For two seconds, I heard him inhale, and then came the shouting. But those two seconds, when I felt so good for standing up to him, cost me my second year. Instead of serving one year in the military, I ended up staying for two.

"We, as students, wanted to protest against it a lot and that's when the first student strike was formed, which was in November 68, I think. It was an occupation strike, we were sleeping in those faculties. Our faculty was a kind of information centre because it was, as I said, in Celetná Street and it was adjacent, the tract was passable, and we could go both to Celetná Street and to the premises of the Rector's Office, where you could go out to the Ovocný Market. We had a kind of information centre there, we didn't let anybody into the faculty that we didn't want. I was playing handball at that time, I was more muscular than I am now, my muscles are not where they were then. So as a young, muscular freshman, they made me head of security for the whole building and all the leaders of the student movement. Among which, I was bodyguard to a little boy who was very agile, who knew everything, could do everything, could talk to everybody, one Vladimir Zelezny, later director and founder of Nova TV."