Pavel Staněk

“Seventeen of us from the entire Republic applied for that audition. The applicants were from Košice, Poprad, Bratislava. Everyone wanted to get to Prague. It was the most difficult audition that I have ever done. Moreover, it was unusual. The usual audition for a musical director means that they give you something to learn at home and then you are supposed to rehearse with an orchestra. And then they give you something that the orchestra knows about five minutes beforehand and you must conduct it. This is how the usual audition takes place. Whereas there it started with them giving us a manuscript paper and Vaculík said: 'Write, gentlemen.' Seventeen of them were there and almost all of them left. They did not want to do it, or they did not know how to do it."

“I know that it was on Friday, and we were removing German signs from shops. I remember that. Then I know that we built barricades. One of them was where I lived. I do not know anymore what the name of the street was, but I think that it is called Milady Horákové Street nowadays. I was standing at the barricade too as a boy. And when German cars with soldiers came from Letná from above, they would stop at the barricade, and we would lock the Germans in the cellars of the surrounding houses. I also remember that a German broke away from us and started running. Everyone started following him. I did not because I was not in the first row, but I heard them talking about it. He ran to a cellar somewhere and they trampled him to death there. Other Germans let us lock them. They handed their weapons in and were locked somewhere.”