Marcel Hájek

“I didn’t copy anything out, I never was good at typewriting. But I tried to distribute samizdat literature. When someone wrote it out, I tried to get to where it needed to be. One time I distributed materials for the Jazz Section like that. A certain person, whom I knew and who knew me, brought me a stack of material from Prague, and I distributed it around Pilsen. You couldn’t send it by post. People knew me by then, they knew I was bringing them [literature - ed.]. It wasn’t just Jazz Section stuff, there were Infochs - Information on the Charter, or Vokno and Voknoviny by Franta ‘Porky’ Stárek. Then some events by the Jazz Section and the Jazz Section news. Everything was distributed like that. There were always people who distributed it, you gave them a stack, and they took it to other people.”

“We wrote a petition to Rudé právo to have Charter 77 published, and we gave it to students to sign it. [Vladimír Zindr - ed.] and I were the first to sign it, and then another seventy-two or so students signed it. When I was later called for questioning, I gave all of the documents to my friend Petr Götz in Slovany, whom [State Security - ed.] didn’t know about, so they wouldn’t search for them there. I didn’t keep them at home or even with my mum. I left everything with him - even the signed petition lists. Of course, we knew that Rudé právo wouldn’t publish the text of Charter 77, it was an act of provocation. And they found out. [At the interrogation - ed.] there was a stetsec [State Security officer - trans.], then the secretary of the Regional Committee of the CPC, Burian, and then the ideological secretary of the Municipal Committee of the CPC, [Jaroslav] Borka, [who is now a city deputy in Karlovy Vary - ed.]. These people wanted me and Zindr to show them the petition lists. We said: ‘No, we’ll only show you the text with our own signatures.’ The only names there were Hájek and Zindr. ‘Don’t even think we’d show you [the lists with all the signatures], when you’re making such an affair of it. All we wrote was that we’d like the full text of Charter 77 to be published. Seeing that so many things are being said against it, people should know what’s written in it, so they know what to oppose. Because everyone is damning it, but they don’t know the text. So the text of the Charter should be published, perhaps with some commentary. Gorbachev is in power now, there’s glasnost, perestroika, other documents have been made public, so let them publish the Charter, too. You have [the petition] here with our two signatures. Take it as if the two of signed it.’ And they said: ‘But where are the other [signatures]? We can also have your house searched!’ To which Zindr and I replied: ‘We burnt the papers with the students’ signatures.’ So they couldn’t search for them, wouldn’t know where they were. We said: ‘We’re not going to let anyone else get implicated in this.’”

“There was a concert of several bands in Služetín. Služetín is in Tachov District; it was a farm belonging to the dissident [Daniel] Mráz. [The event - ed.] took place in his barn. We have photos of it. We arrived there. We had a friend who had an old, rounded bus, which was used to transport the bands’ speakers. So we pitted in [for the travel costs - ed.], and he took about fifteen of us there and then back again. That’s how people gathered there. Several different bands performed there - Ženy, Suřík, Křížalovský fošna. The bands finished up, we left, and about half an hour later the cops trawled the place. We escaped that, we left in time. But the NSC [National Security Corps, the police - trans.] came in the dark and nabbed the people who stayed there.”