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Jan Šimsa is a representative of the Christian-oriented dissent of Brno. He was born 2. 10. 1929 in Prague and after finishing high school he studied theology at the Comenius Theological Faculty and graduated in 1952. As a parish priest of the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren, he worked until the forced prohibition of pursuing a profession in 1973. In this period, just as Božena Komárková did, he sought the transformation of theological and the ideological foundations of their home church within the informal stream New Reconstruction. In the following years, he changed his profession, worked as an archivist, a handyman of church buildings, and after moving to Brno in 1975 as a manual labourer. Šimsa was a signatory of Charter 77 and in 1978, he was arrested and spent eight months in a jail. During normalization, he participated in the organization’s underground university´s lectures, publishing samizdat and leading informal ecumenical dialogs. After the Velvet Revolution he also worked on publishing Božena Komárková's writings after her death, which he kept with his wife Milena Šimsová on her estate, which was donated to the Moravian Museum in 2012. In 1991 Šimsa received the Order of T. G. Masaryk. He died 5. 4. 2016 in Brno.

Milena Šimsová and her husband Jan Šimsa were representatives of the Protestant dissent in Brno. She was born on 5 October 1932 in Turčiansky Svätý Martin in Slovakia, but later moved to Brno. She graduated at Brno´s Faculty of Arts in 1956. Twelve years later, she also completed her doctoral studies there. Šimsová published several books, including a book about her father-in-law, a prominent representative of the Nazi resistance movement Jaroslav Šimsa: Svět Jana Šimsy a Úzkost a naděje: Dopisy sny, události let 1940–1945 (together with Jan Šimsa). At the time of normalisation, she cooperated with her husband in dissent activities, and also attended underground university lectures in Božena Komárková´s flat. In 2006 she was awarded the Prix Irene. 

Breda Škrjanec is a museum advisor in charge of the Study Room and Collection at the International Centre of Graphic Arts. She is art historian and sociologist by education and training. She was one of the founders of the feminist group Lilit, which represented the beginning of the lesbian and women’s movement in Slovenia in the 1980s.

Josef Škvorecký was a Czech-Canadian writer, translator and exile publisher. He studied English and Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University in Prague and since the 1950s he worked as an editor and writer. One of his most famous works was his first novel containing autobiographical elements entitled “Zbabělci” (“The Cowards”) (published in 1958), depicting the last days of the Second World War in the city of Náchod (in the book Kostelec) from the point of view of the Škvorecký’s literary alter ego Danny Smiřický. In 1969, Škvorecký and his wife Zdena Salivarová emigrated from Czechoslovakia and settled in Toronto, Canada, where he taught at the University. In 1971, they founded the Sixty-Eight Publishers exile publishing house, which published mainly Czechoslovak exile literature and works by authors banned in Czechoslovakia. Until 1994, the publisher issued a total of 227 titles. In 1990 Czechoslovak president Václav Havel awarded Josef Škvorecký and Zdena Salivarová the Order of the White Lion.