"The day before, my younger brother went on a regular holiday to Yugoslavia. Three weeks earlier, the younger than me had left, but the older of the two brothers had gone on a student brigade to the western states, and he had never returned. My mother and the rest of us did not know they were planning to emigrate, and we expected them to come to (their father's) funeral. We sent a telegram to Austria and Zdenek was no longer there. We sent telegrams to Yugoslavia, but the brothers were determined to emigrate, told us nothing at all, and never returned."
"Apart from the wounds and the shooting, I heard Mr. Klimes shouting very loudly, 'For God's sake, Jesus Christ, people, help!' When you hear this, it won't leave you alone, you can not feel indifferent. I said to my husband, 'Someone's calling for help, I'm going down.' I walked down to the main door and my husband chased after me, telling me that I could not go there without getting shot. Truth to be said, by today I feel that we, as neighbors, were a little disappointed. That we couldn't help them. The situation was difficult, the shooting was repeated and unexpected, that it was not possible to intervene in any way. Only in the morning did I learn that the man who was lying near the sidewalk was shot by Mrs. Klimešová and that a short distance away lied the shot down Jarda Veselý, who, as I said, was a talented singer and could have had a pretty good career in life."
"I don't understand, they knew I was still breastfeeding at the time, and they questioned me anyway. There were about four types of interrogations, and each time it was from someone else. I remember one, it took place right in the police building and there they asked me tricky questions like 'Do you like to teach?' And I say, 'Yes.' 'What would you do if you didn't teach?' 'I don't know.' As he spoke, the person unobtrusively pulled a drawer from the table and probably squeezed the magnetic recorder. I know, I won't say the name, but I remember it well. I think he recorded me. By way of interrogation, he wanted to work to see if I knew a certain person, a certain engineer. He shouldn't have done that because I really liked the engineer. He commuted to the construction site, to the industrial sculpture school in Hořice, I commuted to the drugstore. I really admired the engineer because he studied books about war, about history. He studied by writing notes in pencil on the edge, he was very smart and educated. And so I praise him alone. It turned out that they would be interested in being informd from time to time when I talk to him about what we were talking about."
Draga Zlatníková was born on October 27, 1943 in Jičín. She spent part of her childhood in Valdice. She owes her unusual name to his father, who was half Croatian. He became a professional officer and his mother worked at Dřevotvar, both of whom were non-partisan. She attended primary and then eleven-year high school in Jičín, followed by studying Russian language and physical education at the Pedagogical Institute in Hradec Králové. She taught at several primary schools and later worked in a museum. In her free time she devoted herself to athletics and reading, especially poetry. In 1966 she married Jiří Zlatník and they had two sons together. On August 21, 1968, she lived in the Soviet Union, where she completed a language course. At home in Jičín, on September 7, 1968, she experienced the shooting of a drunken Polish soldier, after which two dead fellow citizens remained. She knew them both, their calls and wailing they heard from outside at home etched in her memory. Her father died unexpectedly in 1969, and the two younger brothers emigrated without prior notice to the family. She experienced several interrogations, the state police tried to persuade her to bring her to a friend. The witness‘s mother had to leave her position at the national committee and was not allowed to visit her sons in Belgium until many years later. After leaving school in the 1980s, Draga devoted herself more to writing poetry and translating. In 1991, she published her first collection of poems, The Nelated Walk to the Rainbow.
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!
