Mgr. Anna Grušová

"My mother had no friends in Jičín, so I was the only person she talked to about all her fears and doubts, even though I was only ten then. She didn't believe it, of course, and that was also because they had arrested several of her good friends who she was convinced had never done anything. She thought it was some kind of conspiracy in the party, with a certain section conspiring against another section. She couldn't explain it. Then there was the Slánský trial, which was broadcast on the radio. Everybody listened to it, and my father was there as a witness against Slánský. I remember thinking, 'He's not telling the truth! How is it possible that my father is not telling the truth?' He said that his father and mother had a pub in Orava that he went to a Hungarian grammar school. Such nonsense."

"We used to visit him. Once every six months. We were twice in Leopoldov and once in Jáchymov. In Leopoldov I remember especially the first visit. There was a huge gate and the visit took place in that dark gate. The wives were on one side, on the other side stood the prisoners in their uniforms and with their caps at their feet, with huge thick bars between them. It was a crazy sight, and behind each of the prisoners there was a guard standing. One of the prisoners was brought in on a stretcher, and his wife almost fainted. Then it turned out that there was some excellent surgeon locked in there, so they were all having their appendixes operated on. Then someone important was coming through, so we were herded to one side and the prisoners to the other. The car went through, the gate closed, and the visit continued."

"Someone rang the bell and it was a messenger from the Stalingrad Hotel. It was called Paris Hotel in the First Republic, Hamburg Hotel under the Germans and Stalingrad under the Communists. Then I think they called it Paris again. The messenger came to say that we had a phone call there. The post office was already closed and we thought that the Eislers, whom we used to go to, were calling us, but because my sister Helena was sick, we stayed in Jičín. We arrived at the hotel and suddenly it started snowing and it was snowing beautifully. In the hotel there was a phone booth with round glass. I saw my mother enter it, pick up the receiver and suddenly se started shaking it. She shouted, 'I can't hear anything'. She picked up the receiver and there she heard, 'Hello, Martinka.' That was absolutely unexpected."

"That was the end of 1952. In Jičín there is the so-called libosad, to which a long linden avenue leads. At the beginning of the linden avenue they erected a statue of Stalin and there was an opening ceremony, and I took part in that. It was just strange to me even then that there was a plaque in the plinth of the statue and it said that on the day the statue was unveiled, all the villages in the Jičín district established an agricultural cooperative. It was just strange to me and I thought, how did they manage to do it all in that one day? And then I remember that there was one house that had a smooth wall. And there was a quote by Vítězslav Nezval painted on the house to mark the occasion: "When all enmity is gone, then our children born in the sun will bless you, Stalin."