Josef Zdražil

“I thus joined the Pioneer organization and I remember it quite precisely, because I didn’t endure in there for too long. We had one meeting, and we went somewhere, we spent some time outside and we were looking at Semily. Our leader was certain Poláček, and as we were sitting there, he remarked: ‘It’s nice here, isn’t it?’ We, children, nodded our heads that it was indeed nice there. Of course we liked the place. And suddenly he told me: ‘But you have come from that bloody dog Tito.’ Tito was the head of the former Yugoslavia. I said: ‘Well, I was born in Yugoslavia, that’s true.’ And he said: ‘Since you come from that bloody dog Tito, you cannot wear the Pioneer scarf, I will take it away from you.’ And he grabbed my scarf, and I returned home crying.”

“When my grandpa died, the authorities did not even allow my mother to go to his funeral. And as for me, the first time to get back to former Yugoslavia was in 1964 and it was not as easy as it is now, when you have a passport and nobody keeps you here and you just travel. But we had to submit a request for money for the journey, it was called a request for granting foreign currency. Then you had to fill out a form and request a so-called exit permit and only then they gave you a passport. And there were many forms to fill out. When I was teaching at school, they were making the decision whether we would be allowed to travel or not, and I needed to gather about seven signatures and stamps before I was allowed to travel.”