"I was definitely being watched. Probably by someone from Hostinné, because if there were a few more cars with Prague plates or a Prague bus parked here for some time, maybe half a day in the parking lot, I was always called to the director the next working day. And she would ask me what was going on there and who came to the gallery. But somehow it always worked out. They just always needed to let me know somehow that I was under some kind of surveillance."
"At that time, the Gallery of Ancient Art was under the Trutnov Museum, where those wonderful people no longer sat, but there was a director, a very obdurate communist, with whom it was truly not easy. She thought that if a young girl like me came there, she would somehow shape her. But thank God she didn't. Still, I had a lot of problems with her. The biggest problem was when I wanted to make an exhibition for Adriena Šimotová here in the gallery, who couldn't present herself anywhere. And when she came here, she was... She liked the gallery, the collection, but most of all she was attracted by the space of the convent, the monastery. And that appealed to her in a very unreal way, and then she would actually come here for a week, for ten, for fourteen days in the span of the nine or ten years, and actually work here because she liked it here. As she said, it was very contemplative. It suited her very well because she really liked the space. So she would always occupy one cell and create there. And I'm so glad that in the enormous body of work that she accomplished in her lifetime, the things that she did here in the monastery, that they are considered - that decade, the 1980s - that they are considered the pinnacle of her work. Most of those things were created here."
"Then he went to Prague to study medicine. And unfortunately, it happened that he had one of his last exams in November 1939, and as fate sometimes throws a curveball, he was supposed to return home to his parents that day. But because my father was a great athlete as a student, and there was a game somewhere that he wanted to attend, he stayed in Prague. And it was the night of November 17th. So my dad did the whole student anabasis - through Ruzyně - and he was in Sachsenhausen in the concentration camp. And again, unfortunately, he was unlucky, because - I don't know if it's true or not, but my mother told me that the students were then gradually released from the concentration camps on Hitler's birthday. And Daddy was one of the last ones that the Germans released. So he didn't show up back in Vysoké Mýto until sometime in the winter of 1942, and that's where my mother met him. After that, Daddy still had to, I don't know why, but had to hide somewhere in Košumberk near Vysoké Mýto, but unfortunately, I don't have much information about that."
Magda Čtvrtníková, née Plecháčová, was born on 27 June 1949 in Trutnov. Her parents came to Trutnov from Vysoké Mýto. Her father, Miloslav Plecháč, was one of the university students arrested by the Nazis on the night of 17 November 1939. He spent the next few years in prison in Ruzyně and the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Since fifth grade, the witness had a clear idea of what she would become - an Egyptologist. After graduating from high school, she became involved in archaeological research under the guidance of Dr. Antonín Hejna. She studied classical archaeology and art history at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. Since 1975, she has been in charge of the Gallery of Ancient Art in Hostinné. During her tenure, she organised semi-secret exhibitions for artists who could not exhibit elsewhere. She organised shows for artists such as Adriena Šimotová, Olbram Zoubek, the couple Věra and Vladimír Janouškovi, Eva Brodská, Václav Cigler, Václav Stratil, and many others. She became friends with many of them. Because of her activities, she was constantly under the scrutiny of her superiors. In 1989, she co-founded the Civic Forum in Hostinné, in which she was happily active. She remained at the Gallery of Ancient Art until her retirement in 2012. She got married and raised two daughters. In 2024, she was living in Hostinné.
