Irina Juřinová

„I was on a business trip to East Germany with the head of our pedagogy department. A German man invited me to dance. I went to dance with him but I held a stiff posture. I just couldn’t get it out of my head: ‚Who are you dancing with? Oh God, who are you dancing with?‘ It was deep inside me even if I couldn’t have presented it publicly there. It was really terrible, you see. Even though Germans were normal people and he himself was probably also just a kid during the war – that man. But it was so deep inside me, you see? As if it were a sin for me to dance with this German guy.“

“Down there in Všehrdova street – I have to go check what is in there these days – there was a tiny shop which belonged to an elderly couple. They sold éclairs filled with cream and with whipped cream on top. Karel bought me one, this is just who I am. It was really a treat. I was looking down on them because we had our window just above their shop, and said: ‘How come they live there alone, those two?’ And Karel replied: ‘Well, they’ve had it like this for some twenty or thirty years.’ That they owned it for ages. And I said: ‘Is it private?’ He said: ‘Well, such a small shop – the state couldn’t take care of it. So yes, it’s theirs.’ I said: ‘So, they are capitalists?’ He replied: ‘Call them capitalists, if you wish. But they are businesspeople.’ So this is how I first spotted a capitalist shop in Všehrdova street.”

"I really felt the need to tell it to someone highly ranked. You can imagine that I wrote him how much I respected him and so on... But also that the arrival of Soviet troops wouldn't improve the situation - to the contrary, which was true. I was like - when in came to Czechoslovakia for the first time, people were waving like this out in the fields and now this?"