Zdeněk Hostaša

“I knew I was in the east zone of Berlin. I reckon, good, I’ll go left - although between you and me, I’m no leftie. It was a good decision, because if I’d have gone right, I’d hardly have got there, it was terribly far away. After a while I came upon a signpost informing me that I was leaving the east zone and heading to the American occupation zone.” (Q: “Weren’t there any patrols there?”) “Wait, let me finish. It took maybe ten fifteen minutes, I don’t know, a short time. I walked on and saw another signpost, and I thought to myself, goodness now what. I was going at a swift pace, I was alone, no one else walked there. The river was on my right side and there was a bridge there. There was one man opposite me, a Russian, I don’t know what he was holding, a kalashnikov maybe. He had it slung over like this and he was looking at me. I didn’t stop at all. Some instinct was telling me don’t stop, keep going. So I glanced at him and carried on straight over the bridge. The Russian stood there, didn’t budge an inch. And there I saw the notice: You are entering U. S. zone.”

“So I went to the river and then over the wires, of course, but I didn’t know the wires, the fences there. I found myself a short stick along the way, I did it all in a hurry, and I used the stick to brush through the grass to make sure there wasn’t any wire there connected to a rocket. I knew it, I saw through it. I saw the electricity isolators, I reckoned now what. And I poked the wires with the stick again, no sparks. I said to myself, blow it, here goes, I grabbed it with my hand - I only felt a little tingling. It was hardly live at all, just a bit of juice in it. I had a leather bag with me, I threw it up on the wires, it created a kind of T if you’d look from the profile. I climbed up, I’m sure a broke an Olympic record. I was torn up, hands all bloody. I jumped into the corridor, and more wires, or rather a fence, but without the T. So again, I threw the satchel over the other side. I knew that Czechs weren’t allowed to construct anything on the Austrian side. So it must be a bit further to the actual border. Well, to put it simply, I got over to the other side.”

“The trial was divided up, it was the public session. I had my mum there and my sister-in-law. The trial was headed by the military procurator, Major Zich he was called. Th name stuck in my brain. Well, and when he read all of the paragraphs and so on - Mum was still there at that point - and when he said: ‘Paragraph 86’, the one for the death sentence, Mum collapsed. My sister-in-law told me that later on, she was with her there.”

“The train stopped, it was the last stop before Berlin. I saw it coming, he didn’t, he was floggered, asleep, I shook him to wake him up. It wasn’t possible. My instinct told me to leg it, but where. The Russians were inside by then. Armed Russians, but no dogs, they getting into the wagons.” (Q: “Was that a search before crossing the border?”) “Yes, that was the Big Ring, the Big Ring and that was it. So off to the toilet, what else could I do? I left the door unlocked and squeezed myself into the corner behind the door. When the Russian came to the door, he opened it and banged it close again. I saw in the small mirror that it was a Russian. I guess he thought: ‘Some poor sod,’ and banged the door shut and the train set off.”