Mgr. Miloslava Slavíčková , Ph.D.

"I found out about it in my Czech exile community, which was connected to the Catholic Church. I have to admit that I’m not a devout Catholic, but I went to church and attended the gatherings because I respect tradition and held in high regard that priest who used to say, ‘I’m the priest on the E4 highway,’ because he traveled around the major cities in western Sweden and celebrated Catholic Mass there. And I really did go there with my two children also because of those two priests who had taken care of them in Switzerland. And it was, as I say, more out of tradition and patriotism. And that’s where I learned that the canonization of Agnes of Bohemia was going to take place. And that’s why I decided to go to Rome. And it worked out perfectly. It was on the weekend, so I was able to take time off from work. So I flew to Rome and witnessed that magnificent gathering. It was an amazing experience! Just standing in the square in front of St. Peter’s was incredible, because so many Czechoslovaks had gathered there. A huge number of them were wearing traditional costumes, because they apparently thought the best way to represent Czechoslovakia was in national dress. And that looked extraordinarily surreal in that Baroque setting. I remember, for example, that there were people from the monastery in Odolena Voda. And of course I understood that something was going on, because so many people had arrived—a huge number from Czechoslovakia. And on top of that, for a Catholic celebration, because I knew that the Catholic Church was, of course, far more persecuted or monitored than, say, the Czechoslovak Church or the Evangelical Church. Precisely because of its international standing. So I asked people what the situation was like in Czechoslovakia, and they replied something like this: 'Things have already started to change everywhere. Prague is already full of East Germans; it’s already happening in East Germany; it won’t happen here.” And that was on a Sunday, mind you! And by Friday, those same people were already standing in the square. Well, and then, of course, I was in the church where the pope—as they call him in Italy, “Polaco”—the Polish pope was celebrating Mass. He spoke about Saint Agnes. And at that time, Halík, who was there, said this sentence—which I really hadn’t heard before—that once Blessed Agnes is declared a saint, that is, canonized, things will be good in Bohemia.”

"And then came the icing on the cake. Seifert won the Nobel Prize. Well, I—I should tell you this, since I’ve already written about it. Because I was actually the only person at the university at that time representing the Czech language, I was approached by the Nobel Committee to collaborate with them. So a year before Seifert received the prize, I began working with the Nobel Committee—the eight members who nominate candidates for the Nobel Prize. So all that time, I was sending in various translations and writing pieces and so on. And in the end, I knew that Seifert was going to receive the prize, because I had already translated into Czech a statement by Lars Gyllensten, the first secretary of the Nobel Committee. And while it was tremendous for me, it was also a burden, because I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about it, and I really didn’t tell anyone—not even Janouch, with whom I was still in contact by phone and so on. And Janouch actually confirmed this by writing in his memoirs about how he found out about it in London and how surprised he was. But I already knew about it by then, so I had the opportunity to translate Seifert’s speech into Swedish—though at the time it still couldn’t be sent officially, so it had to be sent through various unusual channels. But it was translated and published in the Swedish magazine Akademie. And my name is there, so I’m not making this up. And I also had the opportunity to attend the award ceremony.”

"The events surrounding Heydrich’s assassination had a huge impact, because I remember that at that time they installed those loudspeakers in villages and small towns that read out, in very harsh language, the names—the names of people who had been tried and executed. And on top of that, red posters with the names were put up. Once, when we went into town, my mother read one of those posters and saw that her cousin from South Moravia, whose name was Bumba—Jan Bumba—had been executed. So I still… I still remember that terrifying, that terrifying German language. Of course, I didn’t really understand much of what was being said, but it made a very, very bad impression.”