PhDr. Bohumil Svoboda

“The gentleman of the Short Film came to tell me that the checking that was at Barrandov, that it also applied to the Short Film and Gottwaldov Studio and that I should have finished the work I have done and that it is over. So I lost all contact with Gottwaldov, because the director Bosak no longer wanted to have anything to do with it. Then I returned to Prague, where I did various shovel jobs. By the way, for example, we planted trees where there are already grown trees at Ladronka. It's a park today. There we planted trees according to plan.”

“Upon returning from America, political and trade union functions were all over me. I was then chairman of the race committee. I drove with the director of the company, which was also a Christian Democrat from Prague 6, Dr. Petřík. We went on a tour of a future warehouse and he asked me what I was saying to the Charter. I didn't know what was going on and she stated: 'The one that Landovsky is distributing all around Prague throwing it into all mailboxes.' I said, 'I don't know anything about it ...' I didn't sign anything either. And neither did Peter. And it was interesting that the bishop Tomasek did not sign it either, so I thought I was perhaps on the right track. But my good friend Josef Zvěřina, a well-known theologian, an excellent man, who was a pity o have died so soon, so he actually signed it. He said to me, 'I felt it was a moral obligation to support this. But he was one of the few people who did.”

"One of our professors came to the class, his name was Franek, and he said, 'Guys, remember this date.' Then I walked around the school building from the school, still standing in the Národní obrany street. There stood German soldiers, a wet snow was falling and they stood by their bicycles. They rode bikes there. They stood there beside each other with the wet snow falling down on them. That was the famous arrival of the German army in Prague 6. I was already a student. I don't know how old I was. About fourteen. From our apartment it was close to the Prague Castle. I went to the Castle, where President Hácha made a loyalty vow. I stood in the doorway of the cathedral, and President Hacha walked two meters away from me with his hat off. He always wore that hard top hat. So I remember that very well. He was the only president at that time went to the church on his own initiative to make a vow to confirm it before the God. All the others must have been chased in there.”

“Once they contacted me on the street by picking me up, putting me in a car, driving me to the street next to Bartolomějská, and they started asking questions wanting to know what I could do to help them at Barrandov. They needed information. I strictly, really severely forbade me not to talk about our conversation with anyone. About fourteen days later, they invited me again and I said, 'I can't sign this, I consulted my father, it is customary with us, and he told me not to do it because I'm too talkative.' The investigator began yelling at me for what I dared to do as they forbid me to talk about it. They fired me and told me to prepare myself to bear the consequences. Those were such that I couldn't move away from Barrandov, I kept on working as an assistant director, and it was absolutely impossible to get any professional rise or get a more responsible job. Not at all.”

“The grammar school is a corner house, with windows partly facing Wenceslas Street. It is parallel to Charles Square. So when we leaned out of the window, we looked directly at the church on the right, the church of St. Cyril and Methodius, where the paratroopers were hidding. We looked there a few times, and then were forbidden. The windows had to be closed. In the worst days of the conquest of the church, first with water and then with a weapon attack, we were not allowed to go to school at all, we had to stay at home.”