Jiří Felix

I remember that two or three months after the German occupation of the borderlands the city of Most was completely evacuated, empty. We went for a walk in the city and the shops were empty with nothing to sell; just the portraits of Hitler and Henlein were in the shop windows instead of goods.

During normalization, I have been a commissioner for entrance interviews on the department of Romance studies many times. It was a total farce, because the poor applicants were thinking that it was the job of the commission to decide about them being accepted. This was an absolute error, but we couldn’t tell them. The only thing we could say was whether we recommend them or not, but the decision itself was up to the Communist Party Headquarters for Prague 1 on the Old town square. I remember sad stories; there was a boy, whose name I forgot, from a film-maker family – smart, polite, he knew all he had to. We recommended him, but he was refused, because his father was expelled from the party.

And then the Heydrich assassination happened. I remember clearly how we went to school and all the trams stopped in front of the the Invalidovna house; we couldn’t go any further as the assassination was committed. We were able to get Vysočany, where we lived, only after several days. I recall how I went to see my mother in the school teachers' room and everybody wanted Heydrich to die. Which eventually happened, but what followed was terrible. Accidentally, I was just on Malostranské Square when the city radio announced the destruction of the village of Lidice.

At university, we had a girl who left after two years. She was really good-looking, smart, her father being a senior doctor in Benešov. But contrary to her father, she was a terrible communist. But she was the kind of a saloon communist, a very dangerous one; she always asked: „how do you mean it, comrade?“ Later on, we learned that when her father spoke against the regime at home, she threatened him: "Don't talk like that, papa, or I will have to denounce you!"