Jaroslava Wollerová

“We then went to a requiem mass in Osek which was dispersed by the police. Dispersed is not the exact world. When we were leaving the mass, the main entrance was blocked by a lorry. All of us had to go through the gate and of course, everyone was beaten by a baton. We ran away in all directions. We were wandering in the fields at night. We were afraid to get on the train. There, for the first time in my life I got to know what fear of physical pain and violence that one cannot avoid was. As I was instinctively protecting my glasses I was hit in the shoulder and could not move my arm. I went to the faculty doctor with a stupid excuse saying I had fallen somewhere. He looked at me: ‘Were you in Osek? Well, I will not report it. Tell your friends not to be afraid to come, in case they are hurt.‘ That was basically the first time I encountered brute power, and that you can be afraid when it is this bad. I did not know it would affect me so much. When I came to Osek years later during a completely innocent trip and saw the monastery and entered the yard, I admit that my teeth chattered. My experience was deeper than I had ever admitted to myself.”

“January 1969 is a nightmare for me. The student strike was behind us. Mr. Smrkovský came to debate with us. We were still hoping that something would happen. And we probably did not want to admit to ourselves that nothing would happen. That everything would in fact peter out that it would end up even worse than it was before. I know that I did the exam on Children´s literature on the afternoon of 16 January. We had a really good relationship, so we waited for each other, and we finished in the afternoon. And suddenly one of our teachers staggered out of the office and said: ‘For God’s sake, something happened in Prague, a student self-immolated. Back then, just provisional halls of residence were in Ústí, there was only one little room with a television in it, so we were stuffed in front of the TV, wide-eyed because of what was going on. Back then, communication and phones meant a problem. We happened to have a phone at home. In the evening, there was an invitation for me to come to the post office. That is why I wondered what was going on. My mum called me crying. She said: ‘For God’s sake, promise me, that you will not do anything like this.‘ That it is not a solution. And what about the parents of that boy? Well, everyone was down because of it. We considered going to Prague for the funeral. Our Prague colleagues asked people from smaller towns not to come because the situation in Prague would be hard to manage. Because of it, we stayed in Ústí where a huge commemoration ceremony took place on the square. I can still hear the sirens of the factories in Ústí nad Labem - and there were a lot of them. It was gloomy and raining. The dean of our faculty, by coincidence a historian, spoke there on the balcony. We then got to know that it was the last straw of his career. His speech together with the fact that he was in charge during the so-called emergency years cost him his job because I remember that he ended his speech by saying that he was proud to be a graduate of the faculty where Jan Palach studied. So, until this day when I remember these moments, they give me shivers. We were all down because of it.”