Jitka Chaloupková

"That is the merit of Director Seidl, he was very keen to have the organ repaired, he loved music. Now what to do with it, since it's already been repaired and the conservationists got the money for it. Director Seidl's other idea was to start doing concerts, but for that we needed the approval of the party, the church secretary. He didn't like it very much, he argued that it was in the church and Director Seidl said to him quite jokingly, 'I'm not going to take the organ on my back and put it in the square.' In the end, he confirmed it, the concerts began to take place there and were successful. We always had the church completely full."

"Prior Heřman Josef Tyl was originally in the New Reich and then he was sent to Teplá because the German Premonstratensians had to leave, it was Czech-German. Even the monastery, they didn't talk to them there, he wanted to go, he didn't want to go, he just had to go, they left only the librarian, who was almost ninety years old. And this Mr. prior Tyl was in trouble because he wanted to give them food for the journey. He wanted them to leave politely, normally, because they were spiritual people. So then he stayed there and tried to keep the monastery going, which he managed to do for those few years, for those almost five years, because he was a wonderful organizer, and he knew how to deal with people, so he could get them easily. But he also had his own experiences, he was in Auschwitz and Buchenwald during the war. I talked to one person there who was in prison with him, he was a communist. He said to me, 'You know, he kept us all there, otherwise we wouldn't have survived.' Well, after the war, and after the monastery was closed down, he went back to prison at Mírov and Leopoldov, and he was sentenced to 15 years for nothing, just because he was a priest and he tried to send those poor German comrades away politely. He was then released on amnesty, I think eight years later, I don't know exactly."