"Interestingly, the motion to reopen the investigation [into Jan Masaryk's death] proposed that several people be heard again, and one of them was [Antonín Nežerka]. The case was closed in October 1951 and persons who apparently knew more and whose original depositions had disappeared from the file were to be interviewed again. That re-investigation never happened; it was sabotaged and never took place. The people to be heard died one by one in various situations. The inquest was closed in October 1951, and my uncle was found dead outside his house on 23 December 1951." - "Where in front of the house?" - "In front of his house in Byšice. He went to the pub regularly; there used to be a pub called U Struzků where there are apartments today. He was playing cards and witnesses recall he was nervous that evening. He said he was leaving early; he was being followed by guys in black coats. We don't know exactly what happened. However, he was found dead outside his house the next morning. There's a ditch there, it's dry now, but there was likely some water then. Let me quote the cause of death; I couldn't remember it by heart. The death certificate says the cause of death was 'suffocation from drowning after fainting.'"
"Dad actually lived a quite troubled life, shall we say, because he came from a plant owner's family. His grandfather founded a factory in Sobotka under the Humprecht. They made home shoes. It was this beautiful functionalist building right under the Humprecht castle. Then the nationalisation took place in 1948 and they took everything from my father's parents, the factory and also the villa where they lived. My grandfather couldn't take it and had a heart attack. He died and left his wife, my grandmother Libuše Slavíková, a lonely widow with two children. My father was three years old and my aunt was one year old, still a baby."
"My grandfather, who I remember as he died when I was about 14, lived a life less ordinary. He was a motorcycle racer. He was on forced deployment during the war and managed to escape along with a Frenchman. They fled from Hamburg, Germany via Poland to Bohemia. Then he hid the Frenchman for some time. He then got to France via Italy. My grandfather was shot on a barricade in Prague in May 1945. He suffered from the consequences all his life. He had breathing issues and stuff, and he was kind of bitter about it and very much an anti-communist person and a fighter. He later died from the effects of his injuries."
Jana Poláková, née Slavíková, was born in Prague on 2 August 1975 to Jana Slavíková and Hynek Slavík. Jana Poláková’s great-uncle Antonín Nežerka lived in Berlin in the 1930s, working as a chef at the Egyptian embassy. He moved with the embassy to London after the outbreak of World War II, meeting Jan Masaryk. In 1946 he returned to Czechoslovakia with his family and worked for the Foreign Ministry as a chef. When Jan Masaryk died under unclear circumstances on 10 March 1948, he was on duty and was interrogated. In December 1951, he was found dead by his home in Byšice. According to Jana Poláková and other locals, the incident was suspicious. His death was never investigated, however, there was no autopsy and post-revolutionary efforts to exhume him came to nothing. Jana Poláková completed the grammar school in Mělník. She studied English studies from 1993 and later art history at Masaryk University in Brno. After graduating, she worked as an interpreter, a banking sector manager and a teacher at primary and secondary schools. She has been a member of the Byšice municipal assembly since 2006 and since 2010 she has been the mayor of the municipality. In 2025 she lived in Byšice in the house that once belonged to Antonín Nežerka.
