Ing. Zbyněk Šorm

"Then after high school I wanted to go to college. At first I thought, thanks to my grandfather's upbringing, that I could go to do systematic zoology at Charles University. But there, when I applied, they said, 'You're not in the social youth association, don't even try putting it here, because we won't take you.' I know that my dad and I argued at the time about how we would call for an appeal, whether we stated 'Honor to Work' there at the end, or 'Peace to the World.' I said, 'Honor work, I don't want that there.' I don't know what we put there in the end, but luckily the appeal was successful, because for me it was also that one didn't want to serve in the military for two years."

"Listening to foreign radio was important, at least for us. First, the Voice of America, which aired every day at nine o'clock in the evening. Then the Free Europe. But Free Europe was terribly disrupted; there was such a bubbling, and when it went through the broadcast, you didn't hear anything at all. But there was one way to get around it. It was the legendary, at least among our friends, the Soviet receiver Vef 206, as it was named. It was such a big transistor for flashlights. And it had six shortwave ranges, using which Free Europe broadcasted. We always managed to find a range, which was less disturbed. So you could also listen to Free Europe broadcasts there, which was very important for us."

"I think that the roots of every person are important; that is, what a person has experienced, who raised him, who and what knowledge and skills were passed on to him. For me, it was both my grandfather and my dad. Their lives are also important there, because Grandpa went through the First World War as a Russian legionnaire. This means that he completed the entire journey via the Siberian route from Ukraine to Vladivostok on the other side of Russia at that time. And he also knew Russia at the time of the Bolshevik coup, where it was happening, at least as he told us when we were old enough, so he told us this. It means that the Red Army actually terrorized not only the legionnaires, but also its own people, because they looted and all that. He even said that in some cities they begged them to stay longer to protect them."