Mgr. Václav Hurt

“The first interrogation came about three days after I had moved there. They took me to Stod and the offer was clear. ‘Vicar, you have just moved here and you certainly do not wish to move again soon, and we do have the authority to make decisions in this matter. It would be therefore advisable if we were on good terms. For start, if you could tell us, for instance, who goes to church on Sundays. We know it anyway.’ If I had said it to them and signed, they would have been able to blackmail me the next time and threaten that they would tell it to the people that I had informed upon them to the police. I had been refusing any form of cooperation from the beginning and I had them rewrite some portions or I told them that I would not sign them. So we eventually found a way to get along with one another. They were eventually sending me notices and I was going to the police station in Stod. I talked with them. I tried to talk about general things, about nature, and mountains, rivers, and they always turned the conversation so that they would get some names from me. I think that they were not too successful. It lasted for about a year during which I had about one interrogation a month. Then during the second year, they turned their attention to people who were going to the vicarage and they stopped interrogating me. There was a kind of a trend; one time they took about twenty young people for interrogations. Some girls were fifteen years old. A Volha car arrived and took them from their homes to Pilsen, in most cases. They even underwent five-hour long interrogation sessions where they were completely alone.”

“We went from Albertov to Vyšehrad where it was supposed to finish. The we walked back. I actually walked all the way. I had to return home, because in Hrabová we had agreed on taking down the scaffolding on Saturday so that we would be able to finish the construction of the roof. I left Národní Street immediately before the attack. I was in the first rows and we were sitting on the ground for about half an hour or an hour. Policemen were standing against us. I was a bit ashamed for that. They allowed me to enter Mikulandská Street. I think that they didn’t let in anybody else. Then they closed the street and they stormed at the people. I went home by the last train and when I arrived home I turned on the Radio Free Europe and I found out what had happened.”