Ing. Alexej Kelin

"I got out - stupid as I were - wearing a suit and a tie from the personnel carrier. A crowd of people was assembled there and I asked them: 'Hello, please, can you tell me where there is a post office here? I need to make a phone call.' The people roared: 'You quisling swine!' And cobble stones starting flying my way."

"Naturally, I am also baptized as an orthodox Christian. Those orthodox priests who were here at that time were great, strong personalities. Precisely because they lived through a civil war, all of its horrors, they were people who spread around Christianity based on its principles, not on the outer form. That means compassion, support... There was a great priest here who had wed my parents in St. Nicholas temple at Old Town's Square. He had lived very modestly, having one bed, a small kitchen and a closet. When somebody needy arrived, he would have them sleep in his bed and make his bed on the kitchen floor. He was the head of the Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia."

"When they approached my father telling him that a preparation of an anti-Bolshevik uprising was underway and that they desperately need experts to lead artillery batteries, he responded that he would not fight anymore. He said that this was about to be a fratricidal war which will bring about no good. But his father who always brought him up towards decency and resistance to any warring told him: 'This is great evil. You indeed need to defend yourself. If we don't fight back, it means that we agree with it and this makes us guilty.'"