Lenka Fialová

"The pilgrimage was well known in the Zlín region, many people went there. We had already played a puppet theatre with Emil in Uherské Hradiště. He had beautiful classical puppets. So we agreed. We worked together in a studio called Kudlov, in Hermína Týrlová's group. That we would go there and do theatre. But we only had two puppets, but there were six of us. We had a puppet of Škrhola and I led and played Kolombina. The others helped us. In the pub where we unpacked the theatre, they brought chairs and beer. They would take care of things. We went on this big pilgrimage, which is around the 16th of August, to Hostýn. But we didn't realise that it was so close to August 21 and that there would be police everywhere. We also reported at work what we were doing and there was a spy, so I guess he reported it to the State Security that we were going to Hostýn with puppets, so they were already watching us on the train when we went there. We only realised this in retrospect, that there was a person who was reading a newspaper, there was a hole in it, and he was watching what we were saying and what we were doing. There were already big crowds at Hostýn. We were playing for about half an hour and suddenly the police ran in, but by then they were uniformed policemen and they caught us all, led us into cars and took us to Bystřice pod Hostýnem for interrogation. So we couldn't even finish the play in the end."

"I remember that because we lived in a small neighborhood near a movie studio. And it was there, on a hill above Zlín, that the Russians appeared on the third day after the occupation. They made a military camp there, a really big one, with cannons pointed at Zlín - because it's in this valley below. And there were a lot of Russians there. We were very afraid of them because they looked terrifying. They were dirty, ruined, sick. And they came with gasoline cans to get water. That was the dilemma - should I give him the water or should I not give him the water? I could see that he was human, but we didn't want to help them. And most of all, we were very afraid of them. They looked like Mongols. It was probably on purpose that they included people in those occupation troops who didn't know Europe at all. We heard stories that someone had been shot in Brno, so we were afraid of them."

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