Ing. arch. Martin Laštovička

"Oh no, this is unbelievable, this is really unbelievable. What can I say, I was like, this is terrible, they kept calling us students, yeah, students, we were still students, we were almost 50 years old and we were students, yeah, it was annoying. But the worst thing is that if I said I had a trial somewhere, for example, people didn't take it very positively. Yeah, it wasn't positive. It was really on my nerves, it was like, it was just like I'd done something. It's not normal. That society had a very difficult struggle with itself, to this day it still has a problem coping with the revolution, to this day we can't even cope with communism, to this day we can't cope with the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, like the Munich betrayal and so on."

"Well we were determined not to withdraw because we kept saying that, and one of the main arguments was that the current student academic senate stood up for us, that we were the founders. And even, it was also such a master piece by our attorney that he invited the college to intervene. And it was only then in the next act that they stood up for us as well. We said, that was not our will, that was the will of the student body at the time, that expression of disbelief. And he, Snášel, was saying no, there were private persons signed who wanted to harm me. And the judges were on his side. That there was no organization then and that those private persons were responsible. And they didn't want to hear anything about the revolution!"

“We started to sleep in faculty and people started to come during the first night, for example a man came, and he gave us a cyclostyle with membranes, colour and everything. He gave it to us and he said: ‚I don´t need it now, you will need it.‘ We were excited and we said: ‚How will we return it to you?‘ ‚No, it´s okay, I will let you know, I will come.‘ So we printed posters during the first night of occupational strike. There was a first republic two-tailed lion and under it was written: ‚For our pride.‘ We truly wanted to live a different life, not a hypocritical one, we wanted to live a colourful life that we would be proud of and to be proud of our nation too. The next day in the morning we glued them in the Gottwaldova street, it was so called “Cejl” nobody knows it now. There are many factories and we glued the posters on their doors. A lion ‚For our pride‘. A doorman came out and ripped it. We told him: ‚Sir, why do you rip it? Look, what it says.‘ He looked at it: ‚For our pride‘ He did not know what to do at all because he did not expect it. So, he glued it back and said: ‚All right, boys‘ And he went back.”

“We began to strike on the 20th November in the morning. The day was crucial also in Brno because the emergency regiments in Brno were ready to beat the demonstrators. The mayor from Brno prevented it. I remember it well; we were at the edge of the demonstration on "Svoboďák” (the Svobody square). I saw that the emergency regiments officers of National Security Corps were angry because they could not beat us, I saw them destroying their bus with truncheons, furious, because the mayor prevented them from beating us. Before, when they were waiting for running towards us and beating us, the fear was overpowering. A friend, a classmate who was not able to speak was next to me. He only gave shrieks; fear can do it. The first day I went to the toilet and suddenly I said to myself: ‚It has developed a lot; they will lock me up right at the beginning. It will be horrible, I will finish my studies, who knows if I will be allowed to work somewhere.‘ Something was telling me: ‚Go out from the toilet and do not return to the Faculty.‘ But I surpassed it and returned, because of my family, because of the students with whom I started it. I want to tell you my realization that to be brave is to overcome fear.”

“The hypocrisy of society was horrible because it minded different opinion. It was bothered even with different children´s opinion. It means that when my grandmother wanted us to go to religion class, they were annoyed at school. I even served at Mass in Church of the Holy Mother of God for some time but communist invited my dad, who is not religious, and wanted him to make me stop serving at Mass. Can a nine-year-old boy who helps priest at church endanger the communist regime? It is really twisted; however, they minded those trivialities and they threatened people because of them. They minded when you attended religion class. They belittled faith in classrooms, there were anti-religious tests in civics, and the teacher´s narrations - everyone who attended religion classes, approximately four or five people from the whole class, would stand up and were standing while the comrade teacher was explaining that it was wrong and that their opinions were also wrong. Could that have endangered socialism here in this country? It is completely twisted. The regime naturally fought those issues and of course they were annoyed with any other opinion that was not compatible with the leading role of the Communist Party; such opinions were persecuted, belittled and the people were persecuted.”