Rudolf Žák

"There were German children and Czech children in the same class. At that time there was a Václavík, his name was, our class teacher. He was a Jew, but he wasn't a Nazi, maybe he hated them. He was quite a good professor. And it seemed like they had a completely different teaching here at this school. There they were primarily doing mathematics and physics, and it was all marginal to them. So we had a teacher there as a class teacher, this Vaclavik. Then there was one guy for English, he was from Germany, I think he came... he had an iron cross and one arm, I don't know what he was, except that he taught us English. And then there was one, he was an older gentleman from Germany, because in Germany the apartments were bombed out and they gave them apartments like this in Bohemia, they gave them a completely furnished apartment that was left after the Semitic people."

"There was mobilization in '38, I was in first grade, and my mom and I were escorting my dad as he got on the train, and there was an older gentleman looking out the window. Mummy was crying because she had lost her brother and her father in the First World War, so she was scared. And the older man was looking out the window and he said, 'Lady, don't cry. Everybody's given up on us.' He said it a little differently. He said, 'They're going to have to disband this circus anyway.' And that's what happened, and then there was all this development. And it wasn't until I became an adult that I realised that these people, ordinary people, actually thought better than a politician many times. That's interesting, that stuck with me because of one dirty word."