"I trained as a junior at the 1955 Spartakiad. When I was older, we had practice in Sokol and we also practiced for other Spartakiads. Just when you were used to doing exercises, you wanted to keep exercising. As an example I could mention Jarina Žitná. Jarina Žitná, the chief of the ČOS after 1990, also practiced at the Spartakiads and composed songs for them." - "You mean the Czech Sokol Community?" - "Yes, already after the restoration of Sokol after 1990. When I exercised at the Spartakiad, I perceived it as an exercise I was used to. But at the last Spartakiad I perceived it as a crazy mass promotion of communism. And I also told the others, and I guess I made some of my fellow gymnasts angry with me."
"I think there was fear of the Soviet soldiers. We have a big yard and the Russians settled there. In our house, which my parents built in 1930, there were tenants upstairs. They had one daughter about my sister's age, about fifteen or sixteen. Then there were other lodgers in one room who also had a daughter. I know that my parents used to shut these girls in a room to keep them locked up. I'm sure they were terribly afraid."
"1968 was a terrible year. What happened was something terrible. I myself was a complete ruin. I took the radio, opened the window wide open and turned the radio on there, as Prague called for help. That the Russians had arrived and that they had started occupying us here. That's how I experienced it."
"I perceived the Second World War very intensely, because you could feel a lot of tension of parents and everything. For us, it was so that here in the back of the garden we had a giant pit dug into the ground, a cover, and it was covered over with something. And then when the revolution began, so the mother carried pictures of her mother and her father in the shelter. And she baked strudel. And we were supposed to hide there, because here the school was occupied by the Germans. And down here in the basement there was a radio and we listened to it. And I still hear the jingle that came from Prague, and that Prague was calling for help. And there we were all in that basement. And it was terribly tense. It really was, one still remembers it today."
"I've been watching TV and I was saying what's going on, what's going on? Well, it happened. What happened was that they were beating students on Národní třída. Then I went to work at the school. We went on strike with the boys at the school. At that time, my daughter and my son-in-law also taught there, so nearly the whole family was there. And we went on strike with the boys. So we actually seemed to be striking here as well, and outwardly showing what was going on. Then we went to Prague to Wenceslas Square, which was filled up to the last place. Marta Kubišová sang, but everything as it was, as you heard, on the balcony in Melantrich. And we rang the keys. Then I went to the giant demonstration at Letná."
Miloslava Pangrácová, née Trojanová, was born on May 21, 1937 in Říčany. Her family built a house here in 1930, where Miloslava has lived until today. During World War II, German soldiers stayed with them; the Soviet ones did after the liberation in 1945. Already as a little girl she practiced in Sokol and in 1948 she participated in XI. All-Sokol Rally. At first she could not study, so she started working. Around 1962 she began to study remotely at the Faculty of Education, Charles University. In 1970, she received an offer to join the Communist Party, but refused to do so. She devoted herself to teaching practice and after the revolution founded a family school. She also participated in the All-Sokol Rally in 2018.
