"Since I went to work when the weather permitted, on a motorcycle, and the route Olomouc - Prostějov - Brno was very interesting also from a military point of view, so I somehow cooperated with the media in Prostějov and reported the movement of units to one editor. How many are there above Olšany, how many tanks are there and so on. And it once happened that when I went to a meeting of the editorial board, Russian tanks were passing through the city and on Sunday, August 25, they opened so-called warning fire from tank machine guns, during which they injured people and shot three people. I'll never forget running in a deep crouch and those bullets hitting the plastering two meters above my head as I ran away from that inferno. I ran to the district committee of the Communist Party, where the meeting of the editorial board was held, then about twenty to thirty people, who were nearby, hid there. When the shooting stopped, someone said that someone was lying outside, and about fifty meters from that place someone was shot, so two brave men ran for him and dragged him dead behind the door of the committee. That was the culmination of my contacts with the Russian 'liberators'."
“There were usually around forty of us at school; there were no changing rooms in that school, which was built around the end of 19th century. There was a long board with hooks on the wall where we hung our clothes, often wet winter coats and hats, and there was a stove in the corner. The school caretaker came once every two hours and stoke up the stove, some teachers stoke up the stove themselves. In the school, about ninety percent of teachers were men, a female teacher was exceptional. I don't know if there was already a sink with running water in the classroom, or if there was still a bowl for washing, I don't remember, but next to the blackboard there was a chalk holder for chalks, a wooden plate like that, two floors, where the chalks were on top and the bottom was a sponge, a cloth was hanging under it. A blackboard was wiped with a sponge. Few people knew how to clean the blackboard dry, it mostly remained dirty grey. The benches were a seat and a worktop in one piece, it was one piece of furniture, under the worktop was a compartment for a school bag, the worktop, which was slanted, ended with a horizontal surface in which there was a hole for the inkwell, there was ink. It was possible to cover the inkwell with a metal sheet, it rode on such rails. We wrote with pens, it was a holder and a tip that dipped into the inkwell, but only in the second grade. In the first grade, we still carried as our equipment a black board, probably made of slate in a wooden frame, on which we wrote with such pens, which were such thin chalk. We were learning to write before we moved to those notebooks to inkwells and pens. We had pre-war syllabaries, Czech, sometime from the 1930s. It was not possible to change our shoes, we were in the same shoes we came to school in.'
"Once my brother left our house without permission, maybe not even three years old. He got lost, my father was at school, mother became quite nervous about it, got on her bicycle, went to report it to the police and cycled through town. She found little Jirka somewhere on a truck among Russian soldiers, he was said to be sitting somewhere on the side of the sidewalk somewhere in the center of Prostějov, the car was driving by, he waved, they took him in their arms and drove with him somewhere, fortunately not far."
Miroslav Zikmund was born on May 2, 1940 in Prostějov to parents Miroslav and Zdeňka Zikmund as the eldest of three children. His father came from Kojetín, from the family of a dispatcher, later an inspector of state railways Alois Zikmund. They moved to Břeclav, where he graduated from secondary grammar school, then the Pedagogical Institute in Brno. He became a teacher. His mother, Zdeňka Zikmundová, née Brandstteterová, came from the family of a sugar factory accountant, they were moving and finally settled in Břeclav, where the parents met. She practiced gymnastics competitively, then became a referee. They got married in 1936. Both were involved in sports and were members of Sokol. In 1939, fearing the Nazi persecution of Sokol members, the parents moved to Prostějov. Miroslav Zikmund studied at the secondary grammar school in Prostějov and then at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Technical University in Brno, which he graduated in 1963. He got married in the same year. He was devoted to music since childhood. He played the piano in the student orchestra at the secondary grammar school, later in the university orchestra in Olomouc and in the Orchestra of the competing club ROH OP Prostějov (they were renamed Forum in 1988). He worked as a water management specialist at the Regional Military Construction Administration in Olomouc, and from 1969 he worked for the Long-Distance Cable Administration. In 1968, he witnessed the so-called Bloody Sunday in Prostějov. In 1977, he started working as a technician in the investment department of the District Institute of National Health, where he remained until the Velvet Revolution. He co-founded the Civic Forum here. In 1990, he worked as the vice-chairman of the municipal national committee, in the years 1990-1994 he was the mayor of Prostějov, later he worked in the Enterprise of National Construction and as the director of the Housing Administration of the city of Prostějov. He retired in 2002. He and his wife Jana, née Ovčáková, have two children. In 2022, at the time of filming, he lived in Prostějov.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
