“On September 21st in the morning we went to the Academy but we didn't get pass the entrance hall as there were soldiers and they had bazookas. Jirka, as he was the director, went to negotiate with the Russians and they allowed us to get our stuff from the office but after that we were forced to leave and they banned us from entering the building. So we went to an office. They took just my daughter's photo. We got our stuff and we left, and as we couldn't go to work we went to 'uochab', at the Academy, for that whole week. What we were doing there... We would listen to the radio, we would talk, but we didn't work, as we were in a library, we were allowed to go there, so we would listen to the radio and we would discuss what was going on in the first place.”
“It was in 1938 when we were forced to run as Kounov was the last village to be occupied. We learned that in the evening and we had to move till midnight. But we knew several months in advance that it was quite uncertain, that we couldn't be sure whether we would be occupied or not. So my parents had all packed and were ready to move so we managed to do that till midnight. But it was quite ugly as Henlein's supporters were guarding us with revolvers in their hands, they were walking around, waiting to see if we would indeed move out before midnight.”
“The year was 1948 and there was Zdeněk Boček studying law together with Miloš (Kirschner – a puppeteer), who was a son of the then Minster of Defense. And we were friends of Zdeněk and we were planning to leave the country. But in the end, me and Miloš decided not to go. We didn't want to leave our families, our parents. We knew that parents of people who left were persecuted, even arrested and so on. So we changed our minds and in the end we said that we weren't going. Zdeněk then tried to leave the country with his girlfriend and he took some top secret Ministry of Defense files his father had in possession with him. And after they caught them and found the files, he got into serious trouble. His father renounced him and he in turn renounced his father and was sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted and changed to life in prison and in the end he spent 14 years in prison. He was released in 1962 and died in 2001.” - “Did you still see him after he had been released?' - “No, we had not seen him since he left. We didn't even know that as he didn't try to contact us. After that, it was all over.”
Naděžda Zahradilová, née Bartáková, was born on September 26th, 1928 in Prague to a family of Antonín Barták, a teacher, and his wife, Františka, a dressmaker. She spent her childhood in Kounov in Rakovník region. Before the war, there were both Czech and German populations in the village, after the Munich agreement Kounov was part of a disputed territory which was annexed by the then German Reich as late as in the second half of November 1938. After that, the Barták family had to leave their house in a hurry. They settled in Prague‘s district of Libeň and Naďa graduated from the local grammar school. She witnessed the situation after the killing of Heydrich and also the Prague uprising of May 1945 when she was hiding in a cellar. In 1947, she started to study at a faculty of law and befriended Miloš Kirschner, one year her senior, who had later become a well-known puppeteer. After the Communist takeover of 1948, she and Miloš were thinking of leaving the country together with Zdeněk Boček, general Boček‘s son, who was later tortured to death by the Communists. But in the end, they abandoned their plans. In 1949, they didn‘t pass political screenings and had to leave the university. They married in 1950 and had a daughter, Naďa, but after three years they divorced. Both were striving to find a job, Naďa had been working in an office at Avia Enterprise workshop, Miloš participated in the anti-Communist resistance to some degree. He was sentenced to four months in prison and after that he was conscripted to the Technical Auxiliary Battalions. Later, Josef Skupa gave Miloš a job at the Spejbl and Hurvínek Theatre. In 1957, Naďa got married for the second time and gave birth to a daughter, Jiřina. She had been living in Dřísy in the Mělník region and worked as an accountant at a veterinary office. In 1962, she moved back to Prague, as her former boss from Dřísy employed her as his secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture. Later she was working at the Academy of Sciences‘ photo-laboratory‘s office where he met her third husband, Jiří Zahradil, the director of the Academy‘s library. Naďa retired in 1992.
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