Alice Šimůnková

"Like for me - the environment was something completely new. And here I was, I named this gentleman, his name was Pat. So he was, they didn't have kids. And he was just so friendly. I maybe even worked there. But that was, I think, at the lady's. She did some office work, I helped them with some things. So the atmosphere was very friendly. And then I met, interestingly enough, he was from Northern Ireland, from Belfast. But I think it was also through this guy Pat. His name was Derek Smith. And then he came to visit us. But I couldn't go there anymore. That was then in 1969. So, like, they're Catholic. So they're kind of human and helpful and stuff like that."

"Our family, I mean without the father, lived for the ideas of the first republic. The ideal there was Masaryk, Beneš. We even had their pictures at home. And now I remembered, if I can go back. I don't know exactly how, yeah, but when I thought about it, it came to me that we came home, I guess that was when my father was arrested. And they were searching all over the place. All these books and stuff, I don't know what they were looking for. So... This feeling, well. And now I don't know why I said that. How I got into it. The pictures... that Masaryk was ripped off the wall. So... Such an experience, but I was a kid, right. That was '53. So I wasn't even six years old. And that '53, that was terrible. It was like... Currency reform. Stalin died, Gottwald died. Now it was like some kind of public grief. And I came home, I was scared that my grandfather had died. So it was such a time."