Mgr. Drahomíra Brychtová

“When I attended the Gymnasium [secondary school] in Chotěboř, thecommuter train stopped for example at Doubravka, we jumped out and threw ourselves into the grass as the conductor had ordered us. In case they bombed the train, we would be covered by that grass. That’s how I found out that I had hay fever. Because, when I lay in those plants, it plagued me for all my life. The teaching was suspended for some time in the Chotěboř secondary school because it was used by the German army, we would go there only to pick up our homeworks. And we survived that time in our homes.”

„The war started and dad joined the resistance in Hlinsko. The Gestapo came to pick him right to the classrom, that’s where they arrested him. The other day, I walked down the street and a touching thing happened, very old gentleman approached me, I did not know him. He told me that he was in the class when they arrested my dad right in front of him. That moved me quite a bit.”

„It was great until the Henlein party [German nationalists] became prominent, and then the beauty changed into a horror. When I was around four, my parents were sitting on the school porch and the road, nothing would drive there, neither cars nor horse carriages, they sent me to the shop across that road so that I’d practice my independence. On the road, I was attacked by Henlein supporters, they were thirteen or fourteen and they kicked and beat me brutally until my parents ran to me. Mom started to chase them but she did not manage to, they hid in the cornfield. Maybe it was better that way that she didn’t catch them. I’ve born this trauma for all my life. Even now I feel… because the wounds healed, bruises dissolved but my soul still hurts.“

„We used to walk. I love water and I would go swimming on every occasion. We walked from the Jánuš pond up the road leading from Chotěboř, there’s a ski piste nowadays. My aunt said: ‘Oops, it’s going to rain tomorrow. It’s said that when the sky is red in the evening, it’s going to rain the next day.’. And it was not red sky, it was Ležáky on fire. I get shivers down my back when I see the fire in the sky, the red clouds. We would never think that it would be such a big fire. This is how I saw Ležáky with my own eyes.”

“Because language and literature are cultural treasures that nobody can deride. One student had to write something about what he read but he wrote to his notebook: ‘I did not commit any crime at home and I’m not going to speak the language of traitors.’ So I wrote that he would probably remain dumb because in every country, traitors abound.”

"I am neither Jan Hus nor Comenius. I‘m just a tiny miserable worm and I was aware that I was committing a treason and I’d spit at my feet because we had to, in front of some symbol, Czechoslovak flag or Comenius, claim aloud that we agree. My two children were at a college at that time so I did this despicable thing. I regret having left the church and I regret that I didn’t protest. This is not an excuse, though, and I’m really ashamed.”