Jaroslav Najman

"[Antonín Čelechovský] was an excellent organizer. Even before we had our first members' exhibition, he arranged a whole bus to go to Germany to the Dresden gallery. And on the way there, we also visited the Meissen porcelain manufactory. Čelechovský arranged that. We helped him fill the bus, up to thirty seats. I don't remember if they were theatre people or photographers. I do not know. But this was his first act, which was a wonderful plus. The second wonderful plus - we had a members' exhibition. Thanks to him, we could present our things - they selected things we painted at home. He examined what was good and what was not and selected a collection of paintings from about twenty-two authors. And this members' exhibition, when it ended..." - "Where was it held?" - "It was at Na Karmeli street, where Standa Kovář had a folk art school. He then took this members' exhibition to Lidice without telling us anything. We only found out later. It ended up in Lidice, and our exhibition was also taken to Žitava. So that’s how our first exhibition - a collection from twenty people who used to meet up - was shown abroad for the first time."

“My grandmother lived in Husová street, it used to be Klaudiánova street - so a bomb fell through the roof of the neighbouring house, but it didn't explode because it was filled with sand. The whole old cemetery was bombed. It was terrible there." - "So you saw the consequences of the bombing?" - "Yes, because my grandmother lived one street higher than the old cemetery, and we used to visit her." - "What did the cemetery look like ?” – “It was terrible. There were holes, and the graves were scattered around. At that time, they only used coffins for burials. Perhaps, there were no urns yet. It was terrible at that cemetery.”