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Ivan Medek (1925-2010) was a prominent Czech music publicist, theorist and critic. He was one of the first signatories of Charter 77 and founding members of VONS - The Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted. In 1978 he went into exile, where he worked with Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. After returning, he worked in President Vaclav Havel's Office.

Ivan Medek was born on 13 July 1925 in Prague to the son of the legionary general and writer Rudolf Medek and his wife Eva, the daughter of the famous impressionist painter Antonín Slavíček. Ivan’s great-grandmother Slavíčková, had married Herbert Masaryk, who was a step-grandson of the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Masaryk, after the death of her first husband. And Ivan’s brother, Mikuláš Medek, was one of the most notable Czech painters of the twentieth century, Ivan Medek graduated from Grammar School and did not finish his Conservatory studies for political reasons. Immediately after February 1948, Ivan Medek was expelled from the conservatory because of his family background. After that, he was under the constant supervision of the State Security and in the mid-fifties was imprisoned for three months. He was constantly forced to change his job; on the basis of professional knowledge and advice he was hired, but for political reasons he was often fired. In 1968, he actively participated in the reforms of the Prague Spring. He worked as a music critic and music organizer for conductor Václav Talich, as a concert executive and playwright of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, journalist for Czechoslovak radio and Czechoslovak television and as an editor at Supraphon. In 1970 he was fired from the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra when he enlisted the cantatas “Jeanne d´Arc” on the first anniversary of the self-immolation of Jan Palach. Ivan Medek was one of the first signatories of Charter 77 and in 1978 he was among the 17 founding members of VONS. After signing Charter 77, he was given immediate notice to leave his job at Supraphon, where he was employed at the time. Then he worked as a medical orderly, cloakroom attendant and dishwasher. For his work with Charter 77 and VONS, he was included in the Asanace campaign to force unwanted dissidents to emigrate from the country. He was constantly pursued, repeatedly interrogated and detained by the State Security, and after a brutal assault in 1978, he finally decided to leave Czechoslovakia and settled in Vienna. He worked as a consultant at AFCR (American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees) at the Traiskirchen Refugee Camp, was a permanent collaborator of the Voice of America radio station in Vienna, and also collaborated with Radio Free Europe, BBC, Radio Vaticana and Deutschlandfunk. His Press Service provided information and documents on the situation in Czechoslovakia, independent initiatives and the persecution of opponents of the regime. He was a supporter and collaborator of CDUP (Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted) - British VONS. He was among the founders of the Czechoslovak Documentation Center of Independent Literature. He joined the Opus Bonum Catholic Organization. After returning to Prague, he gradually became an adviser to the Czech Philharmonic, adviser to the Minister of Culture, chairman of the Federal Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting, director of the internal policy department and head of the Office of the President of the Republic.

Since 1991, he was the holder of the Order of TG Masaryk for obtaining, disseminating and publishing information on the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, about the activities of the domestic opposition and persecuted citizens. In 1999, he was awarded the Merit Medal. In 2008 he received the Ferdinand Peroutka Journalist Award.

 Ivan Medek left for exile in Vienna with the intention of keeping close contact with his friends in Czechoslovakia and informing the world about what was happening in Czechoslovakia. As a way to defend himself against opposition from home, he founded the Press Service, through which he forwarded Charter 77 documents, VONS, open letters, information on persecuted Czechoslovak citizens, persecution of religious people, and other independent reports he received from Czechoslovakia. Through international radio, in particular Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, this information conveyed listeners in Czechoslovakia. Following a change in the regime, when it was no longer necessary to transport documents illegally across borders, he ceased these activities. Ivan Medek was interested in preserving the testimony of the independent cultural, political and religious activities of Czechoslovak citizens working in dissent and exile. For this reason, he decided to donate materials from his exile activity to the archive, the Czechoslovak Documentation Center, whose collections were transferred to the collections of the National Museum in 2003.

Mikuláš Medek was a Czech artist and the grandson of the impressionist painter Antonín Slavíček. After the Second World War he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and at the Academy of Applied Arts. However, during the purges after February 1948 he was forbidden from studying as he was the son of the Czechoslovak legionnaire, First Republic general and writer Rudolf Medek. In the 1950s he worked as an auxiliary labourer. He was able to become a member of the Union of Czechoslovak Artists with the liberalization of the regime in the 1960s. During this period he began to exhibit both at home and abroad, and worked on public commissions. He became a banned artist once more after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. His work was inspired by surrealism, existentialism and informalism (structural abstraction). His brother was the well-known journalist Ivan Medek (1925–2010). His wife was the photographer Emila Medková (1928–1985).

Vytautas Merkys is a well-known Lithuanian historian. He wrote several books about the socio-economic development of 19th-century Lithuania, and about the Lithuanian national movement. He graduated from Vilnius University in 1951. (Ignas Jonynas taught him.) He applied to the Lithuanian Institute of History the same year, but because of ‘political unreliability' he did not get the job. Merkys was invited to join the institute in 1953, and made his professional career there. At the end of 1987, he became the director of the institute. In 1990, he became a full member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences.

Merkys persuaded the relatives of Jonynas to give the historian's writings to the Manuscript Department of the Wroblewski Library in 1959. He also edited a volume of Jonynas’ writings, which was published in 1984. The volume has a few previously unpublished pieces: Jonynas’ autobiography, and his article ‘Lithuanian historiography'. Several of Jonynas’ letters from the interwar period to various non-Lithuanian historians were published, too. All the documents are from the Jonynas collection.

Jaroslav Mezník was born 31. 12. 1928 in Bratislava in the family of Moravian-Silesian State President Jaroslav Mezník st. Due to his father's post, the family moved to Uzhgorod and then to Brno, where the son Jaroslav Mezník also spent the rest of his life. After graduation in 1948, he studied history and archives at the Faculty of Arts in Brno. In 1967 he presented a habilitation theses at Charles University, and he received his title of professor in Brno twenty-five years later. He found his first job in the State Archive in Janovice, and in the period 1956-1972 he worked at the Institute of History (later Czechoslovak and World History) of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. During the normalisation period, he worked as a manual labourer in a panel factory, later in a lift factory. In January 1990 he became a member of the Federal Assembly for several months, then returned to the Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Arts. In 1994-1995 he became the dean of this faculty. His scholar interest was medieval history and his major works included Praha před husitskou revolucí and Lucemburská Morava 1310–1423.  

Problems with the Communist regime had already manifested themselves during Meznik´s military service. Because of his "bourgeois origin", he served at the Auxiliary Technical Battalions. At the time of the Prague Spring, he participated in the transformation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Party into a democratic left party. In January 1971, he was arrested for three years; he also spent two shorter periods between 1977 and 1989 in prison. He was one of the first signatories to Charter 77. In the period of normalisation, he continued his research and published under the names of other authors or in samizdats. Mezník also strongly influenced a debate on the character of Czechoslovak historiography within Charter 77.

Jaroslav Mezník received many awards, including the Gold Medal of Masaryk University in 1995, the Order of T. G. Masaryk in 1998 and the City of Brno Award in 2000.