Jiřina Císařová

“The Vlasov soldiers were here. Two of them spent the night in our house. The general, Vlasov, he slept in the house of Mika and in doctor Ježek’s place, they were in touch with him. The two who slept in our house were very nice boys. The Vlasov soldiers liberated the main post office in Prague. Were it not for them, all people inside would have died there, including my sister-in-law. They were starving there and people were sending them biscuits through the tube post system.”

“One day they came and as soon as my husband finished his lunch, they summoned him to a police station. He has not come back. He stayed there for 130 days. They took him to the police station in Bartolomějská. I only saw him before the court trial. I was allowed to visit him only once, but I was not allowed to give him anything. They accused him of sabotage and of disrupting the five-year plan, but these were all made-up accusations. He used the common practice of sprinkling saltpeter on grass, but they did not understand it and they accused him. They swore at him, calling him a kulak and they were beating him on his face. They were giving them unpeeled potatoes to eat, or a cucumber and tea for supper. He suffered from hunger there and when he returned, he was emaciated. He was held in a basement in a kind of dungeon. There were five of them and they had a toilet in one of the corners of the cell. It was dark there and he could not see anything when he came out. He suffered from eye problems as a result of it. Eventually they released him, but they even said that people like him should not get imprisoned but that they should form the core of Unified Agricultural Cooperatives.”

“He came back and he later worked as a horse driver here. After they had not been able to send him to prison in February, he received a draft order for the army service. It was supposed to be an extraordinary military exercise. It was on February 2, 1952. They worked in a quarry in Zbiroh. They did not even have gloves, but just leather finger protectors. His son was five and his daughter was one year old when he had to go to the army service. Eventually he spent whole two years there, until January 15, 1954. He was in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions, it was called PTP.”