Pavel Janda

"Basically just family and a few close friends. That was a real secret, I didn't tell almost anyone. At that time, I remember that a friend of mine in high school took me to Blatnička and got me drunk there and tried to get it out of me. And I didn't tell him then and he never spoke to me again. Actually, I didn't find out at all whether it was an action of the secret police at the time or not.'

"I landed there at night, I came out of the terminal building and it was so terribly ugly that I crawled back inside. And I slept there on a bench between variously quarreling Indian and Italian families. And I didn't go to New York until the next day in a taxi. I basically just had a few addresses for people who didn't know about me. I was afraid to agree with someone, because at that time it would still be difficult over the phone. Apparently, if I made an agreement with someone like that, they would let me go nowhere.''