Vít-Bohumil Homolka

"When the Second World War broke out, he joined the French Foreign Legion, the Moroccan division, the famous Czech company Nazdar, commanded by the French captain Sallé. In the battle of Arras, my grandfather was wounded, badly, he lost his right eye, among other things. And then in the hospital, he met my grandmother - she was French, originally Czech, but she had French citizenship - Eugenia Němčická. They got married and while still in France my uncle Jan was born. Then after the First World War, they went to Czechoslovakia, they lived in Tišnov and my mother was born there, her name was Beatrice. My grandfather received many medals and decorations after the First World War for his participation in combat, for his wounds, and awards for the First Resistance. During the Second World War, he joined the anti-Nazi resistance and was awarded a medal for the Second Resistance. And why do I say that, because I received a decoration from the Minister of Defence in 2016 for the Third Resistance. So the cycle of our family has come full circle. I just hope that my daughters will never need any more medals to receive for the Fourth Resistance."

"it began right after the signing of the Charter 77. The interrogations became daily, then they shortened it a bit and it became once a week. But sometimes it was quite cruel. I don't understand people, who say, that they weren't scared. When you went in there, you didn't always know what you were in for. There was always some fear - what will they think of today? What will they come up with today? We were always worried. For example, they pressured my parents: denounce this son, otherwise, you'll have problems at work. They had the sophisticated system worked out. I'd come in, the cop would pick me up, we'd go upstairs to the room, he'd question me, and then he'd take me back downstairs. And once they have been painting the corridor and all of a sudden he started slapping me on the back in front of the workers and saying, 'Come back again sometimes!' Little things like that. Or doing annoying things - at work, with people around - they were very good at that. They didn't do anything else all the time."

"There was a book published in the 1970s, it was called Textbook of Criminalistics, and it was just discovered by people from Brno, so I bought it at Square of Liberty, there was a big bookstore there and they were selling it, so I bought it. And so we suddenly found out that the whole interrogation thing was just a game. The room, the interrogation room was sophisticated, there was a chair for the interrogated, a table, a bookcase, and a mirror. The mirror was a window to the other room, where another interrogator was watching, a bad guy, a good guy routine. And now suddenly you were looking at it from a different perspective. But the Bolsheviks found out that we were buying it, so they quickly began to withdraw the book."

"Then mainly students from Brno began to arrive with all sorts of materials and videotapes of the police intervention on Národní třída. I was working on the square at the time. The communists dedicated the square to Klement Gottwald, I don't know why. We had a pub there, it was a kind of a fourth-grade pub, it was already a bit run down, so we played it there - on the top of the fridge there was a video, a real rarity in those times, we borrowed it, and a colour television as well, and we used it to show the intervention on Národní třída. Then we installed a sound system from the windows of Labuť house so the whole square could hear it, people started to gather there and some revolutionary speeches were made. One wanted to hang all the communists, the other wanted to forgive everyone."