"We practiced and it rained terribly. There was sand in Strahov, and even though there were drains, everything was still wet. We lay down in the mud, but we were proud to be there. Then there was a parade and it was nice. It was all nice. However, some men were then arrested. When they walked in front of the stand where Gottwald was sitting with the government, they pulled out the American flags and instead of looking 'look left' at the stand, they all did 'look right' and passed. But they [communists] would close Sokol anyway. They barely let the gathering happen."
"I was never in Young Pioneers or in the Youth Union. I wasn't interested in that. In the office where I worked, there were only wonderful people. Only later then did a man who was the chairman of the Communist Party come there. Since then, I was called to the HR department every two months. There was a staff officer, the head of the department, and this chairman of the Communist Party of the Czech Republic, and they were very rude to me. I ruined their 100% participation in the Youth Union. I didn't enter there and that spoiled their 100% participation. And so, they were getting me down like that."
"Unfortunately, I have such a memory, and it's not a good one. Everything was rioting, but some people were too much... They showed great hatred towards the Germans. Not all Germans were like that. Germans lived here, whole families. I went home once and saw a gentleman I knew dragging a woman by her hair on the ground. She is said to have been with the Germans, but at the same time I know that she was very good and did not harm anyone. Those people were so nice - they had a shop with notebooks, we children were going to them to buy school supplies. So what I saw stayed with me, I can't forget it."
Jaroslava Piskáčková was born on March 18, 1935 in Lysá nad Labem to the family of František and Oldřiška Piskáč. Her father had a tailor’s business, her mother worked in Kovona. In her story, she recalls the period of the protectorate in Lysá nad Labem and the Sokol, which she joined after the war. In 1948, she participated in the All-Sokol gathering. After graduating from the municipal school in Lysá nad Labem, she applied to medical school because she wanted to be a midwife, but against all odds she was not accepted, apparently for political reasons – her father was a businessman. At the age of 15, she joined the ČKD in Prague as a drafter. After many years, her superiors at work began to push her unbearably to join the Communist Party, because she was ruining their 100% participation. She refused and changed the employer. Until her retirement, she worked as a designer at the Regional Project Institute in Prague. During the occupation by Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968, she witnessed a shooting in Prague. She describes living for 20 years near Milovice, where Soviet garrisons were based for 21 years. All her life she devoted herself as a trainer to children in the physical education union. At the end of the 1980s, she participated in demonstrations dispersed by water cannons, after 1989 she joined the renewed Sokol. In 1990, she participated in the All-Sokol gathering in Paris.
