"We used to spend every night driving around the countryside, putting up posters. In the public toilets at the train stations, in the morning on the trains - it was usually so that even the conductors would stop us and always say: 'Yeah, yeah, the train, go there, we haven't seen anything, go!' Or even at the toilets, when we paid the fifty back then, some lady sat there, we put up the posters in the cubicles quickly, and we left again and we felt that we were spreading freedom, so we really got into it."
"For me, the decisive moment was that Wednesday because on the metro they started announcing - and they used actors to announce - 'Don't go to Wenceslas Square, it's dangerous, there will be shooting.' And so I know my sister was with the medics, and she went, they were prepared, like the services in the hospitals, if there was a real shooting. And, of course, we went there. But we saw policemen on those rooftops of Wenceslas Square with machine guns, or whoever it was, and that Wednesday was the turning point of the whole revolution for me. Because if - this is my opinion - if they had started shooting, even if only in the air, we would have been scared. And if one got scared, one would run away, and the others would run away. Because even on that 17th of November, my sister was there, at that demonstration, my daddy was there, and they were leaving. My daddy sensed it, so he walked out, still in that corridor where he got hit by the baton sometimes when Národní Street got closed. My sister didn't, they stayed there, and later, they hid behind the garbage cans in a yard, and at midnight, they broke into the attics of the houses and crossed the roofs because they were afraid to go out on the street. So, I think that fear played a role there. But by not giving... that Wednesday - I don't know, it could have been Mr Bilak or Mr Štrougal - I don't know who played the biggest role behind the scenes. If they had given the order to shoot, I don't think we would have succeeded."
"I went to the West for the first time for the canonization of Blessed Agnes. I am from the parish of Blessed Agnes in Prague and chose her as my confirmation name. And that was the first time we were able to go. And for me, the experience - the greatest experience was when we gathered in the Paul VI auditorium in Rome and waited and waited for about two or three hours for the Pope, John Paul II at that time, and while we were waiting, there was a kind of our program together. There were thousands of us, I don't know how many, I don't remember, but a full hall. And Father, Tomáš Halík, whom I also knew through my sister because he worked at Apollinaris, he worked there with the medics, and Aleš Opatrný (I knew him more than her) had a program for us. For me, this experience that we could meet somewhere and not only pray together but be together and say what we wanted was so deep that the first time when we went back to the Czech Republic on that bus before the 17th of November, I felt very strongly in my heart: 'I don't want to. I don't want to live in a country where I am ashamed of the government, where I am ashamed of being Czech. I don't want people like that in charge and live behind that barbed wire.' And so I remember how tough it was for me. And I didn't know that so close, less than a week, such big events would happen that would be such a huge turning point for me."
Vojtěch’s sister, Miriam Zikešová, was born on 21 November 1968 in Prague. Her parents raised her and her sister in faith in God. She grew up during the normalization period when being religious and belonging to a church was perceived negatively, and she became a target of ridicule because of her faith, even by teachers at school. Her family associated with several secret priests and became involved in religious samizdat - they helped to distribute the magazine Information about the Church. The witness’ dislike of the communist regime grew stronger and stronger, and her desire for freedom expanded. Her desire to win political freedom for Czechoslovakia grew even stronger after a visit to Rome, where she went in 1989 on the occasion of the canonization of Agnes of Bohemia. There, she realized that in other countries, believers could associate and practise their faith without restrictions. A week later, she joined the Prague student strikes with enthusiasm and vigour. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, when she fulfilled her secular task and helped to win freedom for Czechoslovakia, she embarked on a spiritual career and became a nun. In 2024, she lived in the convent of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculata in Olomouc, where she was Mother Superior.
