Helena Faberová

"The so-called report came to the elementary school, where our daughter was going at the time, that our house is full of hostile elements, that there are a lot of priests coming to us. And Mr. Director was instructed by the district committee of the party that he must talk to both parents of that child. The husband went there first, there the director told him that he was commissioned to talk to us, that we are destroying the future of our children. Again, the director also had the same arguments as Esteban, even if it was unpleasant for him, he was basically a decent person. So the husband spoke to him, told him what he wanted, and then the director said: 'And tomorrow, please, let your wife come'. The husband said, 'Why? Now I was here.' - 'I was told that I had to talk to both of them.' Well, I went there the next day, because they were counting on the fact that there is no unity in families and someone will say: 'Look, because of those children after all, we should...' So they pushed each one individually."

"And the worst experience I ever had from this time was when the secret policemen came to my then fifteen-year-old daughter, who was in her first year of high school, and started interrogating her. Which priests visit us, what is happening at home and so on. And at that time, a very decent deputy headmaster of the school called me at work at the diocese, he said!: 'Ms. Faberová, come here to school.' I said: 'Is something wrong with my daughter?' And he said: 'Well, state security was here I think it would be good if you could calm her down.' So I got there, the assistant principal said, 'Get her out of the classroom.' Which I did, and she fell on my neck in the hallway, crying, and saying, 'Mom, but I didn't cry in front of them.''Well, now she was telling me what happened, that they simply interrogated her. We told them, 'Refuse to deal with them without your parents present.' And she behaved accordingly. And they told her she was a brat who needed to get her bottom spanked. That's what I'm saying... I'm just quoting what the 15-year-old was told. And I told her: 'Magda, don't worry, they won't come again, they tried and you passed.' And I would say that was my worst experience from that time. That they dared to treat a child like that.'

“When my daughter was in the first grade of grammar school, the principal’s deputy called me. I thought that my daughter became sick, but he said no, no, no, but please come here, Mrs. Faberová. I came to the school and he told me: call her to come out of the class, the State Security police was there and they talked to your daughter, a fifteen-year-old girl. I had her called out from the classroom, and in the school hallway she embraced me and started crying and she said: ‘Mom, but I didn’t cry in front of them.’ She told me that she was scared. ‘Magda, don’t be afraid, they will not come again.’ ‘But mom, they told me that I was a brat, and that I would deserve to be beaten on my ass…’ ‘This is an honour for you, you don’t have to worry about this at all.’ They tried to get information from her - Who was coming to visit us? Which priests were coming? - and other things. They started interrogating a fifteen-year-old-child! I considered this to be the meanest thing possible.”

“I was there for nineteen years and during that time we served as intermediaries for distribution of underground literature. That was where I got to know Mrs. Marie Weiss from Munich, but I didn’t know that she was from Ackermann-Gemeinde. Ackermann- Gemeinde is a Catholic organization which was established in Germany in 1946 for the deportees from Czechoslovakia. They were bringing medicine, books and clothes here, at their own risk, and they brought it not only for the German minority living here, but for other people in need as well. I was cooperating with this lady at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. I was taking things from her and handing them over to others. (What kind of books were being sent to you to Prague?) I remember that there was a book Information about the Church, the typewritten version, then some titles from the Petlice edition, catechism from Rome… There were several types of books, but I don’t recall the titles of the books anymore. We stored most of these books in our basement and I also had some things in my drawer in my office at work.”

“My mom, who was already a widow at that time, told me: ‘Helenka, do not let them mar your wedding. I hope you will marry only once in your life, whereas under this regime they can undermine you several times. I cannot forget this! (…) The malicious words which I heard from other people enraged my colleagues and they helped me to find another job. They changed the grounds for my dismissal from “loss of credibility” to a six-week notice and I thus gained time to look for another job. Thanks to one of the colleagues I got a job as a secretary in the State company Kancelářské Stroje (‘Office Machines’), where I told them beforehand that I had troubles with the Ministry of Interior. I rather told them straight away. My future boss told me that he did not care and that the only thing he was interested in was whether I was capable of doing the job and writing shorthand notes… My other sin was that I had relatives abroad. After about a month of my working there the boss called me and he dictated a letter to me, whereby he was requesting the authorities to mitigate the severity of my punishment, because I had been given the notice for loss of credibility even though I had been employed for seven years before that. The boss then petitioned to the labour unions organization on my behalf and he asked them to give me back all my employee benefits which I had thus lost. I was touched by it. Later I came to understand his reasons: his name was Hermann Kunte and his mother was German and he therefore did not mind that I had relatives abroad.”