Jarmila Janská

'As we were waiting for a speech of the minister, our headmaster had his speech. He mentioned everything, all about this voluntary work. He had always figures at hand: how many children, how many employed people, how many of them are mothers and stuff like that, these awful statistics. How many hours they worked in industry, agriculture or picking hops. And my colleagues would fill in exaggerated figures in these surveys. It was in per cents and sometimes the part would be bigger than the whole. Later they would find out there were mistakes. And when it was 9 am, the state broadcast started playing on the radio in all classrooms. The programme for kindergarten was just ending. And the headmaster finished his speech with condemning the imperialists and talked about the villain Reagan. But right at the moment when they turned on the state broadcast, there was a famous child song where little children´s voices sing in the second strophe: ' What a lie! Lie this high!' And that was what everyone could hear from loud speakers in every classroom of the school right after the headmaster's speech ended.'

'It was when they hauled us over the coals again. I was one of the religious girls but there was also a medicine student Karel Tomek. We were both to graduate that year and there was also Anicka Stefanova acting on behalf of the hall of residence. And they wanted us to restore our activities. But we refused to be in the committee and take part in dismissing our colleagues. So they promised they would give us back the log cabins from the summer camp, they had taken. And also they promised us the hall of residence which was originally for male Moravianists. And it looked as if one of the colleagues considered this: 'Would you really give them back?' And they said yes. And then Karel said thoughtfully: 'Well, I have heard this before: If you fall and bow to them...' It was from the Gospel, the temptation in the desert where Christ was tempted by Satan.'