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Martin Milan Šimečka was born on 3 November 1957 in Bratislava. His father, Milan Šimečka (1930-1990), was a philosopher and well-known Slovak dissident. Because of this, Martin was not allowed to study and he was trained in a vocational secondary school by the oil company Slovnaft. Up to 1989 he switched between several jobs (shop assistant, male nurse, lifeguard, boilerman). In 1990 he founded the publishing house Archa, where he worked as an editor-in-chief until 1996. Since then he has moved his post of editor-in-chief to various newspapers, including the Slovak daily SME and the Czech weekly Respekt. Today (as of 2017) he is chief of the editorial board of the Slovak daily Denník N. After 1989, as a journalist he contributed to newspapers and journals including Smena, Domino fórum, Národná obroda, Kultúrny život, Slovenské pohľady, Literární noviny, Respekt, Listy, Gazeta Wyborcza and others. Thematically he mostly focuses on the Slovak political and cultural situation.

Along with his journalist activities, he is also a novelist. Before 1989 he published his stories Vojenská knižka [Soldier card] (1981), Výpoveď [The dismissal] (1982), Žabí rok [The frog year] (1983), and a collection of stories Džin [The genie] (1987) in samizdat form, some of which were later published as books. Džin, containing 3 stories, officially published in Slovakia in 1991, has been translated to several languages and won the literary prize of L.A.Times in 1994. In 1991 he published the text collage Světelná znamení [Light signals], which contains excerpts from his fatherʼs letters from his time spent in prison from 1981 to 1982. The starting point of Šimečkaʼs prose is the feeling of the exclusion of the main character and life on the edge of society – a feeling with which Šimečka was struggling under communism. In his novels the main aspect is authenticity of experience in contrast to the world of real socialism. Since 1998 he has been active only as an essayist and columnist.

Milan Šimečka was a Czech and Slovak philosopher, essayist and publicist. He was born in Nový Bohumín on March 6, 1930. After graduating from grammar school in 1949, he began to study philosophy and Czech and Russian literature at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno, from which he graduated in 1953. After 1954 he was in Slovakia. He taught at Comenius University in Bratislava and from 1958 at the Academy of Performing Arts, where he lectured Marxist philosophy. Here he received a doctorate in philosophy and a scientific rank of candidate for science.

In 1970, he had to leave the university for political reasons. He was banned from publishing and could only work as a labourer. Milan Šimečka was one of the most distinguished figures of the dissident movement not only in Slovakia but also in the Czech lands. He published in samizdat and engaged in the fight for human rights and civil liberties. He was under constant police surveillance for his opposition activities. Persecution by the regime culminated on May 6, 1981, when he was arrested and accused of "subversion of the republic". This happened in connection with State Security´s event "Šiklová et al." after the detention of a French truck with exile publications. On 27 May 1982, he was dismissed without a trial. The prison seriously compromised his health. After his release, he was an independent publicist, publishing his works in samizdat and with exiled publishers.

After November 1989 he was elected as deputy of the Slovak National Council. In July 1990, he was appointed Chairman of the Board of Consultants and a Member of the College of President Václav Havel. However, his time there was short as he died on 24 September 1990 in Prague.

In his literary works, Milan Šimečka first dealt with utopian socialism, the relationship of intelligence and power and the issue of totalitarianism and democracy.

Eva Šimečková was born in 1931 in Moravia as Eva Lahodová. She studied English and Czech language at the Faculty of Arts of the Masaryk University in Brno. In 1951 she met Milan Šimeček, who was studying philosophy and Czech and Russian literature at the same faculty. After graduating, she married him and they lived in Bratislava in 1954, where they both lectured at universities. Eva Šimečková taught Modern English and American Literature at the Department of English Literature and translated from English. In 1970, her husband had to leave university for political reasons. He was banned from publishing and could work only as a labourer. Milan Šimeček was one of the most distinguished figures of the dissident movement not only in Slovakia, but also in the Czech lands. He published in samizdat and engaged in the fight for human rights and civil liberties. Because of her husband's position in opposition, Eva Šimečková was deprived of all possible means of publishing, and when she refused to sign Anticharta in 1977, she had to leave the university office immediately and was not allowed work in any other qualified place. She was seriously ill from diabetes and received a disability pension. When her husband was imprisoned in 1981-1982, she transcribed his letters from prison and let them circulate among the people, thus fulfilling her "factual essence" of the subversion of the republic. At that time she also began translating literature for samizdat editions. In 1984, was published her translation of George Orwell's novel 1984 with the words of her husband Milan Šimečka “My comrade Winston Smith”, which also appeared in the exile publishing house Index. After the revolution in 1989, Milan Šimečka was called upon by Vaclav Havel in Prague Castle to serve as a foreign policy adviser. And it was in Hradčany that he succumbed to a heart attack in September 1990. Eva Šimečková then led a very private life afterwards and occasionally translated. She died on November 17, 2003 in Bratislava.

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.

Oldřich Škácha (1941–2014) was a Czech documentary photographer and dissident. He graduated in photography from the State School of Graphic Design in Prague. In the 1960s he worked as  a photo-reporter for the magazine Svět sovětů (The World of the Soviets, 1964–1966) and his photographs also appeared in other Czechoslovak periodicals. At that time he also collaborated with the Barrandov film studios (1962–1966). After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by troops from the Warsaw Pact, he lived for a short time in Germany and in France, but then he returned to Czechoslovakia. During Normalization, however, he was not allowed to photograph officially. He specialized in portraits of figures from Czech culture and became famous as Václav Havel’s trusted photographer. He documented the life of the dissidents, in particular Charter 77. His photographs have been exhibited in many countries.