Jiri Munk with wife Alena Munkova in Jerusalem

Here you can see me with my wife, Alena Munkova, nee Synkova, when we were in Israel for the first time, in 1999; we're sitting in front of the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. We were completely thrilled by Israel, we liked it there very much. I supported and was a booster of the state of Israel from the beginning, despite the fact that we were far from being Zionists. I came into direct contact with Zionism only once, during my high school studies in Prague. One day, sometime after 1948, this young man came to see me, and introduced himself as a member of an organization that was organizing emigration to Israel. Even before the creation of the independent Israeli state, pilots for the Israeli army had been training in Czechoslovakia. Then when Israel was created and the Arab states immediately attacked it, the only thing that saved them, and the Israeli generals themselves claimed this, were pilots and planes from Czechoslovakia. So this man, most likely from the Israeli secret service, came to see me and was trying to convince me, even though I was only 16 at the time, to go help out in Israel, that they'd train me in Czechoslovakia and then I'd be able to work in Israel as a pilot. But it didn't really intrigue me, our family was never inclined towards Zionism. As far as I know, there were never any Zionists in Brandys.