Zdeněk Hovorka

"Dad said they wanted to start printing leaflets, just to do something against it [the communist regime]. He got into this group that... The circle of people in the army was bigger, about ten people. So one Hlavatý [Hlásenský, ed.] got in, if I'm not mistaken. And he was an agent of State Security [StB], a provocateur. The communist authorities simply wanted to expose potential perpetrators. So it was as if they were trying to provoke or organize some kind of crime so that quickly, without any damage, those future potential perpetrators could be found quickly and they could be quickly convicted. That's what happened. The Hlásenský guy, of course, organized it, gave it some culture, and then, of course, turned them all in. They were all taken into custody. And the ring... The interrogations began. Of course, it's the interrogations that are known, the beating... They had their methods. Dad talked mainly about methods: salty soup and no water, not being able to drink. And most of all - lack of sleep, just hands on the blanket, and as soon as they saw that someone's eyes were closed, they would wake up every ten minutes during the night. If a person fell asleep, they made him walk. And if you don't sleep for three, four days, you say, sign anything. These were simply methods implemented from Russia. I'm sure the beating was there too, but my father never wanted to talk about it, never talked about it in much detail. Probably because of me, because I would tell it at school as a kid and we'd all get in trouble."

"Dad was [totally deployed, but I only have] unverified information about it. He was maybe in Bordeaux, France, totally deployed as a diver. Because there was a big submarine port there and the Allies were bombing it. These concrete blocks under the water collapsed and he was supposedly diving in this copper hood, this suit. And he used to explain to me on our nature walks how to drill concrete underwater. That it's not drilled with a drill, that it's drilled with a scaffolding pipe that you blow oxygen into, and it actually burns through the concrete. That's the kind of thing I remember. He went partially deaf there too, he was deaf quite a lot, he had a problem with his eardrums, his ears all the time. All his life he said he got it from diving. Then he got to maybe - also this information from his story - to Munich or some Bavarian city like that, which was bombed. He was in some sort of commando unit that was tasked with carrying dead people out of the broken houses. And he said, 'In a fortnight you don't even think about it, it's a job like any other. You're clearing away the rubble of houses, you're carrying out dead, torn people on stretchers...' He was in total deployment and he was actually under the supervision of the Germans, so he couldn't defend himself in any way. And most importantly, he wanted to survive, which is what every civilian wants."