“When I was fired from Barrandov, I wanted to improve my cadre assessment and went to an annual part-time job in Kladno, where I worked at the scrap yard at the crane. It was quite an interesting job. I mean from the point of view of contact with crane operators. There was such a great character, Kája Hegenbart, who happened to have the name of a communist official, and he was characterized by eating dogs. So when we sat at the lunch table, everyone unpacked the bread and he unpacked the pieces of meat on the greased paper. He offered us, but those who knew it just sniffed and said it was a dog. He said it was good meat. I think nobody took anything from him.”
“The gentleman of the Short Film came to tell me that the checking that was at Barrandov, that it also applied to the Short Film and Gottwaldov Studio and that I should have finished the work I have done and that it is over. So I lost all contact with Gottwaldov, because the director Bosak no longer wanted to have anything to do with it. Then I returned to Prague, where I did various shovel jobs. By the way, for example, we planted trees where there are already grown trees at Ladronka. It's a park today. There we planted trees according to plan.”
“Upon returning from America, political and trade union functions were all over me. I was then chairman of the race committee. I drove with the director of the company, which was also a Christian Democrat from Prague 6, Dr. Petřík. We went on a tour of a future warehouse and he asked me what I was saying to the Charter. I didn't know what was going on and she stated: 'The one that Landovsky is distributing all around Prague throwing it into all mailboxes.' I said, 'I don't know anything about it ...' I didn't sign anything either. And neither did Peter. And it was interesting that the bishop Tomasek did not sign it either, so I thought I was perhaps on the right track. But my good friend Josef Zvěřina, a well-known theologian, an excellent man, who was a pity o have died so soon, so he actually signed it. He said to me, 'I felt it was a moral obligation to support this. But he was one of the few people who did.”
"One of our professors came to the class, his name was Franek, and he said, 'Guys, remember this date.' Then I walked around the school building from the school, still standing in the Národní obrany street. There stood German soldiers, a wet snow was falling and they stood by their bicycles. They rode bikes there. They stood there beside each other with the wet snow falling down on them. That was the famous arrival of the German army in Prague 6. I was already a student. I don't know how old I was. About fourteen. From our apartment it was close to the Prague Castle. I went to the Castle, where President Hácha made a loyalty vow. I stood in the doorway of the cathedral, and President Hacha walked two meters away from me with his hat off. He always wore that hard top hat. So I remember that very well. He was the only president at that time went to the church on his own initiative to make a vow to confirm it before the God. All the others must have been chased in there.”
“Once they contacted me on the street by picking me up, putting me in a car, driving me to the street next to Bartolomějská, and they started asking questions wanting to know what I could do to help them at Barrandov. They needed information. I strictly, really severely forbade me not to talk about our conversation with anyone. About fourteen days later, they invited me again and I said, 'I can't sign this, I consulted my father, it is customary with us, and he told me not to do it because I'm too talkative.' The investigator began yelling at me for what I dared to do as they forbid me to talk about it. They fired me and told me to prepare myself to bear the consequences. Those were such that I couldn't move away from Barrandov, I kept on working as an assistant director, and it was absolutely impossible to get any professional rise or get a more responsible job. Not at all.”
“The grammar school is a corner house, with windows partly facing Wenceslas Street. It is parallel to Charles Square. So when we leaned out of the window, we looked directly at the church on the right, the church of St. Cyril and Methodius, where the paratroopers were hidding. We looked there a few times, and then were forbidden. The windows had to be closed. In the worst days of the conquest of the church, first with water and then with a weapon attack, we were not allowed to go to school at all, we had to stay at home.”
Bohumil Svoboda was born on September 28, 1924 in Brno as the second son to the family of Jan Svoboda, a doctor of law, and his wife Františka. In 1930, the family moved to Prague 6, where Bohumil studied at the Archbishop’s High School. During the war, the Germans abolished the school, then went to grammar school in Resslova street, where in 1942 the assassins of Heydrich were hiding in the church of Cyril and Methodius. He graduated in 1943, and avoided the total labour deployment. He worked at Nationalfilm as an assistant and longed to be a director. After the war he studied philosophy, interrupted his studies in 1947 and enrolled in the newly founded FAMU. At that time also joined the Folks Party. In 1948 he did not pass political checks and was fired from school. He worked in the Barrandov Film Studio as an assistant director and after the war he completed his studies at the Faculty of Arts. The state police wanted to use him for cooperation, but he refused. At the end of the 1950s did not go pass the checks yet again and was fired from Barrandov. He worked in a scrap yard to improve his cadre profile, but did not get into his field until 1961 when he was admitted to the Gottwaldov Film Studio into a dramaturgical group for children and youth. After several years he finally got to directing children movies, but again got fired, because of the checks applied to all film studios in Czechoslovakia. He again worked as an assistant labourer, until he came to Laterna Magika thanks to the interplay of the Christian Democrats, with whom he travelled to Texas for six months in March 1968. He also returned to the USA legally with his wife and children, working in the Dallas Theater Center from 1969 to 1971. After returning to Czechoslovakia, he was an editor of the supplement of the daily Lidové demokracie (People’s Democracy) and later was involuntarily moved to the weekly Our Family, where he wrote for fifteen years, until retirement. He was in constant contact with the Catholic dissent and the underground church. In November 1989 he was elected First Vice-Chairman of the Czechoslovak Folks Party and in this position he took part in a number of negotiations and revolutionary events. But he had no political ambitions and after some time he ended up with the politics. In 1994 he founded the civic association Karel IV. Later he devoted himself to journalism and wrote biographical works on Catholic figures in the communist regime. In 2012 he was awarded the commemorative medal of the Czech Bishops’ Conference, in 2013 he received the Prize of the Chairman of the KDU-ČSL for civic bravery.
