Jelena Silajdžić

"For me, he [Tito] was - but not only for me, for an awful lot of people, most of them, people I respect, politicians and ordinary people, artists, scientists... Any anti-nationalist will tell you that - I don't think nationalism is a bad thing, I'm terribly proud of where I come from and what I am, despite everything that happened in our country - he [Tito] opened our eyes. He let us live. We made our own decisions, our own destiny and so on. Opportunities were created, we had quality education and self-esteem. We were brought up and educated in such a way that we are each such an individual with our own qualities. We are individualists. That then really helped a lot of our people after the war."

"We did co-productions with Barrandov and so on, and when I was working as a producer, I often went to the Czech [Czechoslovak] Republic and vice versa - Czech colleagues went to Yugoslavia for filming. I could clearly compare, they were different planets. I'm talking about my generation, but you'll hear that in quotes from all normal people who are not nationalists, who don't have that kind of problem and so on. We lived in paradise, it's true, there was only one political party, which was boring. But at that time in Yugoslavia you could normally do private business, we had freedom. I learned French, my colleagues learned German or English, very few learned Russian. Horizons were opening up. While still in primary school, we read compulsory literature - thank you very much for that, it gave me a lot - from all over the world."

"I was in a butcher's shop and I wanted to buy salami and I asked for thirty dekagrams of salami and the lady gave me ten, the shop assistant. I said, 'I'm sorry, I asked for thirty,' and she yelled at me about what I was doing here, that I didn't speak Czech properly, what we foreigners were doing, and so on. And I - I can't even say publicly now what I said to her. I threw the salami there and left. And I woke up at three in the morning and I said, 'My God, Jelena, you're so stupid! You're stupid, how could you fall for that? Maybe she had a bad day, maybe she's stupid, maybe she's evil, maybe she's not, God knows what's bothering her, but you reacted even worse than she did. And I came into the office this morning and Míša - we were still working together - and I think I said to Míša, 'You know what, Míša? We're going to connect people. We're going to connect Czechs and foreigners.'"

"And I say, then we organized one big three-day cultural event at Štiřín Castle and there were big Czech stars there, especially music stars. And in our country it is customary that when it comes to music and it is not a specifically focused concert, that there must be a Romani band there, because Romani music - in general, when it comes to ethno music, is certainly the richest and best on the planet. The fact that Roma live all over the world and are influenced and affected by local contacts, it really is something wonderful. My husband invited a Roma group from Neratovice to perform at the cultural event. Then everything was great, everyone took turns until the Roma group appeared on stage. Then suddenly there was no sound, and then there was sound, and then there was no sound. We were all wondering what was going on and we saw that there was an engineer, like Ferda, but Ferda would never do that, turning the sound off and on to sabotage the group. And we couldn't believe it. That doesn't exist, that's not true! We sent him home, to put it nicely. My husband stood behind the mixing desk and said to the Roma band, 'Now go among the audience,' and they started playing and they were the best."

"You just run because there's a knock on the door and you're just dead. And I say everything. That's everything. We were with the family, all together. Nobody got hurt. For the rest of our lives, we'll have that psychological trauma - what happened, why it happened - but physically we were all healthy, together. Nobody did anything nasty in that war, which is terribly important. And in that purse was my address book, and you understand that in the address book, or in your cell phone today, you have your whole life, because there were fifty people all over the world under the asterisk. Under the B's, too, under the C's... And those people were a huge help. Not only did we have somebody to call and ask for help, but it wasn't even necessary. They sought us out, I don't even know how. How they found us, that we were in Prague."