Milan Řezníček

"We went there by train, they lived about 40 kilometres from Stuttgart. And it was something different. It was such a shock for us that we took the international express train from Prague to Paris. We arrived in Cheb, at the station, the train had maybe eight or ten cars. And they disconnected the last eight cars at the station and the locomotive with the two cars that were going to Germany went over the fence. Suddenly there were soldiers, Border Guards and customs officers, and they were searching the whole train. They were opening pockets at the top, which people don't even use, but there are these cavities, so they were looking to see if anyone was smuggling anything in there, or if there were people hiding there. They looked at the undercarriage. So they pulled us over, or we crossed the border, to put it right. We went over to the border crossing, and they checked under the wagon again, shining flashlights through everything, because it was at night. And then they just got off as we crossed the border, and I was afraid they were going to tell us we weren't going anywhere, and I was looking forward to going to Germany. But as soon as we crossed the border, my wife and I said, it would be alright."

"And then we took part with friends when in Jihlava... Coincidentally, Evžen Plocek burned himself to death in Jihlava at the beginning of April. So we were at the funeral at that time, there was a kind of manifest funeral from the Metropol to the central cemetery. We stood on that corner, where there is a raised wall, where you can see nicely into that street U Cvičiště, so we watched it. We'll probably be in the archives somewhere because they were there with cameras, filming it. I don't know who it was or who they were filming it for, but we were there more as onlookers. We wouldn't have made anything out of some kind of a memorial service in a cemetery. But we were there as silent participants."