Gabriel Janoušek

"About the 1968, I remember one interesting thing that is related to sports. Back in 1969, the World Championships were planned in Bourg-Saint-Maurice, France. There was a training camp there, by the water we forgot what had happened, the East Germans were there, and we were even friends. The water causes that people are friendlier. The Germans avoided us, they didn't talk to us. We always did fuss, even at the World Cup it was repeated. Our sport was one of the poor - we slept in tents, although some were already sleeping in hotels. We had a camp next to the East Germans. Every morning they raised a flag and shouted something, I don't remember what. In the evening we decided to raise a different flag. We found some – I am sorry - shitted long underwear and we put it up on a flagpole in the middle of their camp. In the morning, when they woke up, there was an overwhelming fuss, the German expedition packed up and left. The ČSTV [Czechoslovak Union of Physical Education - trans.] demanded that we leave immediately too. The chairman of the ČSTV canoeists, Ota Halík, who was responsible for this, fled to the mountains for three days so that no one from the ČSTV would reach him. And we stayed there, which is interesting, and it was heroic of Ota, who has long since died. Whatever it was, it was an act that deserves to be recorded."

"I also take resistance after my mother, who - although she was very short - was in prison first in Minkovice near Liberec, then in Pardubice. After a year in prison, they didn't tell her where her children were. She had herself summoned to the superintendent, explaining that she would like to know where her children were. No one told her anything, my mother got angry, even though she was tiny, took a typewriter and threw it at the investigator. Later, when she got home, she had to pay for breaking it. She paid it off gradually. It was deducted from her salary."

"Of course, he tried to do that when the Communists found out about his work and the work of the whole group. He tried to escape, he had organized it quite well. Unfortunately, he hired a man, an associate of the State Security, who led him straight into the hands of the border guards. He was arrested at the border, and so began a fate that affected the whole family, especially the children. My father had everything arranged, prepared, even our transport abroad, mother and children. But father was caught, and everything fell apart. Father had a gun, and when he was caught, he didn't fire. I don't know if that's a good thing, I'm against guns like my dad. A very cruel period began, not only my father was arrested, but also my mother. They were in custody for a long time, where they were interrogated. The trials, as was the custom in the fifties, were staged. They were both charged with high treason, my father first got life imprisonment, my mother five years. He appealed, mother didn't. Her lawyer advised her that there was no point, her guilt was that she hadn't denounced her husband that was life. Horrible, I don't like to remember it. After the appeal, my father got 15 years, my mother got five years, we were left alone in the house."

"It sounds silly, but I was ashamed of it then, because everyone said to me, 'Your parents are locked up!' And at the age of ten, I felt I had to be ashamed of it. Because of shutting someone down, I imagined he was a thief, a murderer, a robber or whatever. But unfortunately, the parents took a completely different side. And I came... only after graduating from the Pilsen school, when there was an educator named Heim, I remember that to this day, who made me aware of it every day. 'You are the son of criminals!' So there I realized that it was not true at all that my parents were fighting for something that was worth it."

"I still had high ambitions. To express my defiance at least in some way, I wanted to be the best at something. I did all kinds of sports, from skiing to canoeing. In canoeing, specifically in water slalom, I got into the national team, with which I won several world championships, including the Olympics in Munich. It was such a satisfaction of mine that I was able to do it, even though I was trampled into the dirt, so that I was not able to move on."