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Jaroslav Hutka was a Czech folk musician, writer and signatory of Charter 77. He studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague from 1962–1966, however he did not finish his studies. After leaving the academy, he became involved in music. He performed solo or with other folk musicians (e.g. Vladimír Merta and Vlasta Třešňák). In 1972 Hutka founded the music association Šafrán with like-minded musicians, which operated for six years. Under this name, a record label producing songs by banned Czechoslovak musicians was also founded in exile. After signing Charter 77, Hutka was prevented from performing publicly and was forced to leave Czechoslovakia in 1978. He settled in Rotterdam where he founded the Fosil record label (1986), producing mostly his own songs. He spent the final phase of his exile in Cologne (1988–1989). In Czechoslovakia Hutka published his texts in samizdat volumes. After his forced emigration from Czechoslovakia, he contributed to Czechoslovak exile periodicals (e. g. Listy, Zpravodaj, Obrys) and collaborated with Radio Free Europe.

In November 1989 he returned to Prague and was one of the most important musicians of the Velvet Revolution. He also continued writing music and literature, which included a critical social tone regarding the newly establishing society. He published several books. He also co-operated externally with Czech Radio and Czech Television. In 2012, he received an award from the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes for the Freedom of Democracy and Human Rights. Six years later, he was awarded the honorary citizenship of the City of Prague.

Jaroslav Hutka’s songs are very melodic and inspired by folk songs. His song lyrics are often nostalgic, humorous, ironic, with a certain amount of social and political protest. Hutka’s poetry is more intimate and reflects the inner doubts, searching and torment of an individual in a totalitarian world.

He is a sound engineer, and he spent more than 30 years in Bánk (the site of a unique summer festival (“nyaraltatás”) organized by the reform-minded pedagogue Eszter Leveleki, not far from Budapest. He began going to the camp as a kid in the 1930s, and then he kept coming back for decades. He had a personal relationship with Eszter Leveleki. Ferenc Háber inherited all the materials related to Bánk from her.

László Hámos was born in 1951 in Paris to Romanian and Slovakian Hungarian parents and was raised in a New Jersey suburb of New York. He graduated his schools already in the United States and was socialized in American Hungarian circles. After his graduation from the Mount Hermon School (Massachusetts), he studied international relations at the University of Pennsylvania. Although he did not earn a degree there, he soon was employed by a legal administration office. Besides pursuing advocacy activities, he worked at the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore for 3 and a half years, then he owned a company which performed legal research and litigation support services for law firms in midtown Manhattan

Milan Hübl was born on 27 January 1927 in Nitra, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia). He was a Czechoslovak historian, teacher and politician. He studied at the Social Academy in Brno. From 1950–1964 he lectured at the Political University of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CC CPC). In the 1960s, he was a researcher at the Institute of History of European Socialist Countries of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague. In particular he looked at the history of the workers' movement, recent Central European history and issues concerning contemporary socialism. At that time, he was an advocate of the reformist movement and in 1968 he actively participated in the liberalization process known as the Prague Spring. From 1968–1969 he was a member of the CC CPC and the rector of the Political University of the CC CPC. He was a member of the Czech National Council (1969) and a member of the Federal Assembly of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (1969–1971). However, after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, he was gradually stripped of all his party and political functions. In 1970 he was even expelled from the Communist Party and dismissed from his job at the Political University. In the 1970s and 1980s he was involved in publishing samizdat literature and in particular he contributed to independent samizdat anthologies. He devoted himself to the themes from recent Czechoslovak history, such as the expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia after 1945, the democratization process and the Prague Spring of 1968 in a political, social and cultural context, and the relationship between Czechoslovakia and its neighbouring countries. At the beginning of the 1970s, he co-edited the samizdat journals “Situační zprávy” (Situational Reports) and “Fakta – připomínky – události” (Facts – Comments – Events). In 1972 Milan Hübl was convicted for alleged subversion of the republic and was imprisoned until 1976; Gustáv Husák refused to grant him an amnesty when he was appointed President of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in May 1975, despite the fact that Hübl had supported Husák and even helped him with his rehabilitation in 1963 after a conviction in a fabricated political trial and had endorsed him during Husák’s promotion to the highest function of the Communist Party in April 1969. Eventually, Milan Hübl was released along with Jaroslav Šabata and Jiří Müller in December 1976 thanks to a campaign by human rights organizations from the West, inspired by Czechoslovak exiles. Shortly afterwards Charter 77 was formed and Milan Hübl became one of its signatories. He was editor of Lidové noviny from 1987 to 1989, a journal which was also published as a samizdat at the time. From 1987, he was registered as a State Security collaborator, although witnesses agree that he did not harm anyone. He did not live to see the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia – he died on 28 October 1989 in Prague. His book Cesty k moci (Paths to Power) was published posthumously in 1990.