Pavel Werner

This is what I looked like after the war, when I had finished my apprenticeship as a shoemaker and had started attending the commerce academy.

Studies were arranged so that one week we would work from 6am to 12pm, and then we had school from 2pm to 6pm. The next week it switched around, we would attend classes in the morning and from 2pm to 10pm we would work. We had a huge load, it was tough to manage all your studies and on top of that regularly work in the factory. 

When I was in my second year, they announced at school that the foreign trade commerce academy in Prague was accepting students into third year - specially selected cadres, as it was called. I and a friend both applied, saying that we were interested in the offer, and were accepted. So I transferred to the third year of commerce academy, specializing in foreign trade, on Resslova Street, in Prague. We were two years older than our classmates, as before that we had worked in the factory in Zlin. At the commerce academy I was also the chairman of the company Youth Union Committee, studies went well for me, I didn't have any problems. I lived in a dormitory, which we had from the Ministry of Foreign Trade on Jugoslavska Street.