Jiří Fuchs

"I joined Charity after the war as a warehouse worker. And there, fortunately, I met a Cistercian, not a priest, but he was from the Cistercian background in Rumburk, and he opened my eyes in a way that I still appreciate. He didn't agitate at all, he wasn't even an intellectual, but the way he behaved, without pretense, he was interested in the other person, I didn't know that. That was a great surprise to me, that it was possible to relate humanly in a completely different way than I was used to. I was a bit conflicted when I dropped out of that school, so I joined the Máničky (men with long hair), as they used to say, in protest. That actually kind of stuck with me."

"In Klatovy, two whole years with the tank corps. And as a cherry on top, at the end we were doing circular defense of the barracks in tanks — against intruders. Who might that have been in ’68...? But it didn’t last long, right? I appreciated that at the time. I couldn't stand those bigwigs — the colonel in charge of the barracks... I hated them. Especially the lower-ranking officers — they were trained to be harsh and unpleasant. You just couldn’t stand them — honestly, I’d say I hated them. But what I did appreciate was that when the Russians came — and they were all die-hard communists — the commander of our regiment actually apologized to us. In front of the whole formation, he expressed his bitterness. And I respected that."