"I still have to confess to something that I was very sorry about: that the husband I married was in the party and he was the one with the 'human face'. He was living it all with us, waiting for that hopeful change. Even though my parents were against it and I could understand in hindsight and I thought I must have let them down terribly. But at that time we saw, even my brothers, that it wouldn't work any other way, that these must be the new people, that it just wouldn't work without the party, I guess. We couldn't imagine, like in the '80s, that it would end up like that - we couldn't imagine that. But then my husband got really badly beaten up. And unfortunately, it all went wrong. He turned to alcohol afterwards. And then he became a completely different person. He never wanted to say why or what. I think there was something they forced him to do through the party and he didn't want to do it then."
"Dad was arrested in November 1956. And it was so that they always met at the church, every Sunday, three of these friends. One Mr. Mrazek, Mr. Pejšek and dad. And this Mr. Pejšek was like that, he was looking for things and he had connections. And he promised dad he'd get him some electric motor and stuff. And so they would just discuss like that, sometimes they would go to him, to this Mr. Pejšek, because he lived opposite the church, or they would discuss in front of the church. And there were people who denounced it, that they were sort of forging something there, that it was just anti-people and anti-social behaviour. And they reported them, and they came to get dad, and they took all three of them away. That's also at that time, I remember, that two of them came too, in these long leather coats - like Gestapo, that's what they looked like when you saw it in the film. And they threw everything in there, they threw out the laundry, they threw things out of the cupboard, in the bedroom, just everything, in the shelves... they threw everything out, they threw it all over. And they brought in a leaflet that... Dad said it wasn't there at all, that they planted it. So some leaflet. So he's gonna go with them, they're gonna take him away. So they took him, then they let him go about a week later, and then they took him again the next week. And they gave all three of them this section on sedition and anti-state activities and things like that. And he was there until about the middle of April 1957, and my mother kept appealing, and they kept appealing too, and then it was in the higher court, and they recognized that... he was sentenced to eight months, and they recognized in that higher court that it wasn't that much of an offense, and so they sentenced him to one month, and he actually served that because he was there even longer."
"They were planning a military coup. They had it planned for March 1949. There were about 300 people involved, he was in the leadership there. But they were compromised and all or almost all of them were arrested. And this Uncle Mila - that was Uncle Mila - so he was supposed to get the rope, he was sentenced to death. Then somehow on the application and on some there just... There were various ones that they could give some pardons. There was determined, apparently by some Soviet advisers, how many of these death sentences would be carried out. So he was pardoned and he got twenty-five years of hard labor. So he was the second son. And so he was there from that year 1949, he was in prisons, he was in Bory, he was in Mírov, he was in Leopoldov, which was just the worst. There was the heaviest dungeon and there he weighed about 34 kilos when he was in the worst condition. But he survived. Then he was at Bytiz, there just outside of Pribram, and from there he got home in 1960, that was a big amnesty when the republic became socialist, so a big amnesty was made."
She was born on 24 January 1947 in the village of Bor near Sedlčany as the eldest of four children of a farmer Jaroslav Pešta. Twenty-three hectares of fields belonged to the family farm, the family kept eight cows, two horses, pigs and poultry. After the communist coup, the Pešta family did not agree to collectivisation. Uncle Bohumil, Jaroslav’s older brother, was arrested in 1949 for preparing a military coup to overthrow the communists. His original death sentence was commuted to twenty-five years of hard labour, of which he served eleven. Meanwhile, Jaroslav’s farm was gradually collectivised. Eventually the Pešta family was allowed to stay on the farm, although it no longer belonged to them, but they worked on it as employees of the cooperative. In November 1956, the witness’s father and two friends were arrested and sentenced to eight months in prison for alleged sedition and anti-state activities. After his mother’s appeal, his sentence was commuted and he was released in April 1957. In 1962, fifteen-year-old Václavka was not recommended to study at a grammar school and found work in the warehouse of a timber factory. A year later, thanks to the help of a helpful headmaster, she got into the Secondary School of Economics in Sedlčany, where she graduated in 1967. In June of the following year she got married and she and her husband moved to Ohrazenica near Jince in the Příbram district. Her husband was a member of the Communist Party and believed in the reforms of the Prague Spring, and was therefore very disheartened by the Soviet invasion. He changed and they later divorced. Václavka was left alone with three children, yet in 1979 she graduated from the Faculty of Education. From 1975 she taught history and Russian: first at the primary school in Jince and later in Pribram. In 1989 she founded the Civic Forum at the Pribram school. After the Velvet Revolution, the family restituted the farm in Bor and her youngest brother Vláďa started farming it. Today, his eponymous son runs a successful farm there. Václavka Caithamlová lives in Příbram.
