Zdenka Žmudová

"And then I started studying at university and the 1960s came, the liberation. And so I had the opportunity to go to Munich, Freiburg, West Germany. The school, the university, supported us in this. That is where I experienced the August in 1968. I did not experience the Soviet occupation here at home, but we were in that Germany at the time and I know that we were shocked by that at the time, because we did not know at all, of course we heard from the radio and television at that time, what terrible things were happening here. In addition, we were quite sad about it, and we even considered whether we should return here, whether we should not stay back there. Because we did not want to return to such a country where there are Soviet occupiers, well, but. And at that time we also received a lot of support from the university students there. I know that we took part in some kind of peaceful demonstration against the fact that we spoke out against the occupation here. And we thought about it much. But because we they were in our last year of university, just before the state examinations, and we simply wanted to finish our studies, so we ended up coming back here to the Czech Republic very late, sometime in November, at the end of the year."

"The 1970s were not easy for me at all, on the one hand, for two reasons. Back in 1960s, and I have to mention them, because then my answer will be easier to understand. I lived through the extremely beautiful 1960s as a university student. On the one hand, I studied first at high school, then at university. It was great; there was a liberated atmosphere and freedom of speech. As a university student, I often attended various student meetings, especially students from the Faculty of Philosophy invited us and we debated and discussed matters, and it was a beautiful period. At that time I also succeeded, I studied German, so I also had the opportunity to travel to Germany, to West Germany in 1967. Then I travelled again in 1968. And that's why when the 70s came, I took them very hard."