Marie Michaela Šechtlová

"I've only gotten into a precarious situation once in my life, and that wasn't heroic either. That was right after school. They called me on the radio to do an interview with me, something like why I chose this school and what it means to me. And when we were talking, the editor in a stripped hood with all those devices - one was already a bit nervous - turned the microphone - it was 1978 - and said: 'We have the anniversary of Victory February. What does Victorious February mean to you?' And I freaked out! Because normalization is in full swing, the microphone at the mouth. I looked at her desperately, because - as I say - I'm no hero, and suddenly I heard myself say perfectly fluently: 'Actually, Victory February was a very important date for me, because my parents had the largest photography plant in the south of the Czech Republic and automatically it would be assumed that I would take care of the race, that I would be a photographer and that I would continue the family tradition. But due to the fact that it became the Photography cooperative, I could devote myself to painting, go to the University of Applied Arts and do graphics.' And that's when the editor started staring again! She looked at me for a moment and then said, 'You know what? We may as well leave this out.'"

“Still, it was never safe to say that something would not happen. Later they introduced so-called registration numbers. People who wanted to work as free-lancers had to have a registration number. You could not exist without a registration number, because you had to write it on top of every invoice. They were making it complicated with those numbers. One day, sometime in early 1980s, they suddenly revoked my dad’s registration number, which meant that he had to go to work as an employee somewhere. But they had the photo cameras, they had their studio, lamps, flashes, and all the equipment. And so they started asking around among their friends and eventually they found out that the reason for taking away dad’s registration number was something that he had said on TV. But the problem was that he had never appeared on television. Fortunately he found out about this and the matter was fortunately clarified. They returned his registration number to him. But if a friend had not told him the reason behind it, he would have simply lost his trade and perhaps never learnt why for the rest of his life.”

“When he graduated from grammar school during the war, he was to be sent to do forced labour in Germany or in some factory. But if he worked for Mr. Šechtl, he did not have to. This way about fifteen people avoided being sent to Germany. But not my father, understandably, because he felt that he would have betrayed his classmates if he had avoided it. While fifteen of our relatives thus pretended that they were working for Mr. Šechtl, my dad and all his classmates went to lay concrete surface at the airport in Ruzyně.”

“According to the legend which our grandma used to tell, the way it happened was that when my grandpa was to be born, my great-grandfather was told to go to a pub instead so that he would not be in the way at home. While he was there he befriended a salesman who dealt with haberdashery goods and the man confided in him that he did not enjoy his job at all. As they were drinking together, Ignác told him: ‘You know what, I will make a photographer of you’ and he brought him home. Since Mr. Voseček never married and he never had his own family, he thus stayed with the Šechtls. My dad thought for a long time that Mr. Voseček was actually his grandfather.”